Mind the Gap | What HK Disney’s ‘stagnation’ says about the real state of our tourism industry
It’s time to switch tactics, build super malls along the border
As American singer/songwriter Bob Dylan wrote, there is “No direction home” – a dirge that lamented how you can’t recapture the past.
For Hong Kong tourism, the same thing applies. Our tourism bodies and the private sector can’t find a way to re-invent Hong Kong’s tourism industry. Supporting tech start-ups is Hong Kong’s version of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, but no one has proposed a cohesive strategy to attract a balance of foreign and mainland travellers. Anxious calls for action fail to understand what contemporary Hong Kong culture is really about and its major shortcomings relative to China.
Hong Kong’s Disneyland is a cruel reminder to taxpayers of how billions were wasted on a high profile project with little shelf life beyond 1997
Tourism Board figures provide a clear prognosis. Mainland visitors declined 3 per cent to 45.8 million. 60.7 per cent were day visitors whose likely purpose was a shopping trip to buy infant milk powder, fashion brands, among other goods. They are avoiding China’s taxes, bypassing China’s unreliable food chain security or acquiring goods that aren’t available.
Historically, supplying underground, black and grey markets have been a proven strength of Hong Kong’s import-export trading business culture.
Hong Kong’s bureaucrats need to conform to the infamous pragmatism of the city’s business people. They may be criticised for being short term, uncreative and near sighted, but that’s a behavioural outcome of local economic history.
