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HONG KONG / WAM
About 1.44 million travellers visited the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region during the eight-day Spring Festival holiday from Feb 10-17, with 1.26 million of them coming from the Chinese mainland, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said.
Speaking to the media for the first time in the Year of the Dragon, the chief executive expressed his optimism and said there had been positive signs at the beginning of the new year.
Lee, ahead of the weekly Executive Council meeting, stated that during the eight-day holiday, there was an average daily influx of 157,000 mainland visitors to Hong Kong. This marked an increase of 15 and 25 percent when compared to the visitor numbers during the National Day and Labour Day golden weeks in 2023 respectively, China Daily reported.
There were about 1,980 mainland tour groups coming to the city, with a daily average of 200 compared with 170 in 2019, he said.
According to the hotel sector’s data, the average hotel occupancy rate also peaked at 80 percent. Lee mentioned that during the initial days of the holiday, the occupancy rate even reached 90 percent, and certain hotels in remote locations were completely booked on the night of the Lunar New Year fireworks show.
Overnight visitors stayed in the HKSAR for an average of 3.6 days in 2023, compared with 3.1 days in the pre pandemic period, registering a 16 percent rise, the Chief Executive added.
Lee also pointed out that it had been a normal trend for many years that the number of outbound travellers was higher than that of inbound visitors during the holiday, as residents enjoyed travelling outside Hong Kong, especially during the long holiday periods.
“The average ratio of outbound and inbound travellers is about 1.5-2.5 to 1. The figure has been higher after the end of the pandemic last year, due to the pent-up demand for outbound travelling,” the Chief Executive said.
Cross-boundary travels between the mainland and the SAR had also become a norm with the city’s integration with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, he added.