Blog

Signs of recovery for tourism sector

A gist of the blog:

The Hong Kong tourism industry has gone through a period of consolidation in the past two years. We have launched a number of initiatives in the past two Government budgets to support the industry in coping with the challenges. With the concerted effort of the Government and the industry, these initiatives have achieved results and the tourism sector continued to recover in 2017. On visitor arrivals, the year-on-year rate of increase visibly accelerated to 6% in the fourth quarter last year, while the overall number of visitor arrivals in 2017 rose by 3.2 per cent to 58.47 million over a year earlier. The number of overnight visitor arrivals also increased by 5%. The average hotel room occupancy rate rose from 83% in the first quarter of 2016 to 83 % in the fourth quarter of 2017. The Hong Kong Tourism Board recently announced its promotion plan for this year and it is expected that the total number of visitors will edge up by 3% to 5% in 2018.

The Government released the “Development Blueprint for Hong Kong’s Tourism Industry” in last October. Our vision is to develop Hong Kong into a world-class premier tourism destination. Four major strategies to achieve this vision are (a) to develop a diversified portfolio of visitor source markets for Hong Kong, with a focus on attracting high value-added overnight visitors; (b) to nurture and develop tourism products and initiatives with local and international characteristics, including cultural, heritage, green and creative tourism; (c) to develop smart tourism with the use of creative media and new technology; and (d) to upgrade the service quality of the tourism industry.

February 18, 2018