Jake's ViewHong Kong can concede the race for conventions, ordinary visitors like our city just fine

City losing race for exhibition, meetings --SCMP headline, July 5

MICE they call this, which stand for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions, and mice is what these events attract, travellers who go where they are sent and do what they are told.

Hotelkeepers love them. They are easier to handle than individual travellers and they do more than just sleep in hotels. They eat, shop and attend meetings there. They are the money makers for the hotel trade.

But they don’t do much for the Hong Kong economy.

The hotel industry is heavily foreign-owned, even more heavily foreign-managed, the furnishings, supplies and food are almost entirely imported and the employment consists mostly of menial jobs, which are largely taken up by labour migrants anyway.

If the mice go outside the hotels to shop, which they are given little incentive to do, they again buy only imported wares. If they go outside for entertainment, our major exhibition centre offers them two streets of tawdry bars and pick-up joints just over the footbridge. There they can be fleeced by Thai girls of dubious gender. Oh, what joy.