Virus scare empties malls on world’s priciest retail strip

Bloomberg

In an almost deserted mall, the few shoppers hurry past wearing face masks. In the luxury stores, sales assistants, also in masks, outnumber customers — if they have any at all. To pass the time, staff chat with each other or play with their phones.
This isn’t a scene from some dystopian movie. Instead, in Hong Kong’s usually bustling Times Square, a 17-floor mega-mall in the heart of Causeway Bay, home to the world’s most-expensive retail strip.
The stylish displays of Gucci and Louis Vuitton advertisements usually compete for the attention of wealthy Chinese tourists, who until early last year swarmed the city for quick shopping expeditions. Now, no more.
Already reeling from months of anti-government protests that at times broke into pitched street battles between demonstrators and police — scaring off tourists — the outbreak of coronavirus has dealt a second, crippling blow to retailers.
Mainland Chinese visitors, who used to come to Hong Kong to buy everything from luxury watches to discount cosmetics, plunged 53% in December from a year earlier. That’s set to fall even further after the government said it will start to quarantine people arriving from across the border.
On top of that, local residents are now reluctant to go out amid fears of catching the deadly virus. The number of confirmed cases in the city climbed to 24 as of February 07, with some of those likely to have been infected locally.
“Many retailers are saying it’s a disaster,” said Nicholas Bradstreet, managing director of leasing at Savills Plc. “In the last 10 days, their sales have been down 70% to 80% week-on-week. There’s very little traffic into the shops” particularly in key retail districts like Central, Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui, he added.
Times Square fronts Russell Street, where at $28,713 per-square-meter a year, retail rents top salubrious addresses like New York’s Upper 5th Avenue ($23,549) and the Champs Elysee ($15,473), according to Cushman & Wakefield Plc.
The strip is usually thronged by thousands of shoppers hitting upmarket stores like Burberry, La Perla and Audemars Piguet. Not this day though. Further down the street sits an empty Prada store. The high-end Italian fashion retailer quit its $1.2 million per month lease at the site four months early, according to the Hong Kong Economic Journal.
“Causeway Bay is very quiet now. It used to have a lot of traffic,” said Wong, a salesperson at a fashion boutique in a mall near Lockhart Road.