Chinese National Day is around the corner, yet this year Hong Kong may be cooling down as a holiday spot. The Hong Kong Inbound Tour Operators Association estimates that the number of mainland visitors during this year’s National Day Holidays will drop 30% compared to the same period last year.
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post spoke with the Association Chairman Ricky Tse who said, “Many Mainland travel companies are already concentrating on transitioning their destinations from Hong Kong to South East Asia. After the two Malaysia Airlines disasters, Malaysia has offered many hotel discounts, Thailand has done the same after the political unrest in their country. Besides overseas destinations it is also becoming more common for mainland tourists to travel to domestic destinations”.
Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao, learned from chairman of Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong Michael Wu, that every year September to October is the peak season for business travelers. However, the hotel booking for the upcoming National Day holiday has dropped over 15% compared with last year. During last year’s Golden Week there was an average of 191 mainland tour groups visiting Hong Kong daily, this was a drop of over 40% from the number of groups in 2012.
The mainland has always been the main source of tourists for Hong Kong. According to data released by the Hong Kong Tourism Board, mainland tourists made up three fourths of the total visitors to Hong Kong in 2013 with approximately 40 million trips.
According to Taiwan’s Economic Daily News, the number of mainland visitors to Taiwan exceeded 500 thousand trips, double the previous year. The number of travelers going overseas is also rising with Japan and America taking a share of Hong Kong’s mainland tourists. The China Tourism Academy estimates that during this year’s National Day Golden Week, 480 million travelers will be going for leisure travel, a 13% increase compared with last year.(Translation byDavid)
