Last week a string of government notables including Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah, Development Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and Commerce Secretary Rita Lau Ng Wai-lan lined up to applaud the signing of a contract with French construction company Dragages to build a terminal for ocean-going cruise liners on the site of the old airport at Kai Tak.
After no private-sector developers proved willing to step up to and fund the project on the government's terms, the terminal is to be paid for entirely from public funds as one of Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's 10 pet infrastructure megaprojects.
Altogether the government has budgeted HK$8.156 billion for the terminal, with officials justifying the massive cost by arguing that it will bring big economic benefits for the city. Building extra berths for large liners, they say, will ensure that Hong Kong maintains its position as a favourite destination for the fast growing cruise industry and its hoards of free-spending passengers, with the new terminal generating between HK$1.5 billion and HK$2.6 billion a year.
Our officials are likely to be sorely disappointed. The cruise industry may well be growing quickly - passenger numbers topped 13 million last year, up from fewer than three million 20 years ago - but the economic benefits go overwhelmingly to the cruise operators, not to the economies of the ports where their ships call.
That's especially true in Hong Kong. According to the Hong Kong Tourism Board, 780,000 cruise passengers visited the city in 2008, but the vast majority were embarking on overnight gambling trips into international waters on casino boats. They weren't interested in spending their money in the city.
According to the tourism board's figures, spending in Hong Kong by cruise passengers in 2008 came to HK$57 million. That equated to just HK$73 per head and amounted to less than 0.05 per cent of the city's total tourist receipts for the year (see first chart below).
To put that amount into perspective, in the same year visiting servicemen - principally the crews of US warships - spent more than HK$182 million in the city: more than three times as much as cruise passengers (see second chart).