Hong Kong recorded 540,000 tourist trips in the first 3 days of the Lunar New Year holiday, but residents made 1.1 million outbound trips

But residents took 1.1 million outbound trips in the same three-day period, twice the figure for arrivals. More than 310,000 arrivals were recorded as of 4pm on Tuesday as the four-day holiday drew to a close.

Tourism industry officials credited the festive events as a huge draw for visitors, noting that 183,674 tourists from mainland China arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday when the city held its Lunar New Year fireworks display, compared with 102,154 the day before.

“This clearly shows that mega events are a big help in attracting tourists and making them stay longer,” said Hong Kong Tourism Association chief executive Timothy Chui Ting-pong.

He said the number of tour groups arriving from the mainland for the holiday had already reached two-thirds of pre-Covid levels.

About 200 groups came to Hong Kong every day during the holiday, compared with 300 a day in 2017 and 2018, he said on a radio program.

Hong Kong’s Lunar New Year boosts restaurants, but one owner is closing up shop

Chui said hotels also performed well, with many reaching 90 percent occupancy rates, even those located in fringe districts such as Tuen Mun and Tsuen Wan, and especially those at lower prices.

Hong Kong United Tourism Guest House Association president Lee Ka-long told the program that budget accommodations have recorded occupancy rates of up to 95 percent, with rooms costing HK$400 to HK$500 per night, less than the before the pandemic.

According to statistics from the Immigration Department, 543,722 inbound trips were recorded in the past three days, with 87 percent of them being travelers from the mainland. The figure is 75.8% of the 716,976 inbound journeys in 2019 before the pandemic and slightly up from 540,993 in 2018.

With Covid-related travel restrictions in place in 2021 and 2022, the number dropped to around 200 for each year.

Economist Simon Lee Siu-po described the 76 percent figure as “good, but not that good.” He said that although the number was a definite recovery from the past few years, tourism should have “returned to normal” by now.

“We have to do a lot better,” he said.

Lee said the city remains “too expensive” for many mainland and overseas tourists – especially budget and middle-class travelers – and that other nearby destinations such as Japan provide better “value for money”.

“We suffer from fundamentally high operating costs and a strong Hong Kong dollar, which discourages visitors from coming to the city,” he said.

Tens of thousands of worshipers flock to Che Kung Temple in Hong Kong

As of 4 p.m. Tuesday, more than 593,000 entries and exits had been registered through checkpoints in the city, the Immigration Department said. Of these, more than 285,000 were outbound travelers.

The largest number of logins, more than 54,000 people, was registered at Lo Wu.

Hong Kong residents appear to have had little trouble getting home through the seven land border checkpoints. According to real-time data from the department’s new mobile app, the process at the various checkpoints took less than 30 minutes around 6:30 p.m.

Hong Kong, ‘locked in a forest’, needs accurate policies: A Lunar New Year Prophecy

Data from the checkpoints showed that from the first day of the Lunar New Year to Monday, the number of inbound and outbound passengers reached 310,000 and there were 41,000 vehicles, an increase of 520 percent and 240 percent, respectively, compared to the same holiday period in 2023.

Among them, the total number of inbound passengers reached 184,000, with 24,000 vehicles entering Zhuhai Port.

338,000 wowed by Hong Kong’s first Lunar New Year fireworks in 5 years

The number of vehicles with a single number from Hong Kong exceeded 8,000 in a single day for the first time, under a scheme introduced last July. The Northbound Hong Kong Vehicle Scheme allows Hong Kong residents to drive in Guangdong Province without a mainland license plate.

The average daily visitor count for the first three days of the Lunar New Year Golden Week holiday was 167,441, a 226% jump from 2023.