OpinionHongkongers should be given HK$10,000 each for enduring the tourist hordes, mostly mainland shoppers

Peter Kammerer says while the government should try to reduce inconvenience to locals, the better approach to ease anger would be to ensure residents benefit directly from the rising number of visitors, most of whom are mainland shoppers

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Mainland visitors crowd a pavement in the residential district of To Kwa Wan, on December 18. Photo: Nora Tam

Published: 3:19pm, 31 Dec 2018Updated: 5:57pm, 31 Dec 2018

Tourism success, as far as Hong Kong’s government is concerned, is about the number of visitors and how much they spend. That taps into job creation and taxes – bottom lines for any city management. But too often, the hunger for an ever-bigger slice of the tourism pie has meant paying little or no attention to the rights of residents and damage to the environment. It’s about time there was payback through an annual cash handout and better planning.

For a start, let’s get the terminology right: most of the people who visit our city are shoppers, not tourists. A good 80 per cent of the almost 61 million estimated to have come to Hong Kong this year were from the mainland and the majority were day trippers. They come on group tours for which they pay little and their guides, with an eye on earning percentages from what gets sold, steer them to specific shops and restaurants. Tourist spots are not on their minds, which is why numbers at our theme parks and other attractions are not rising.

At the grass-roots level, on shopping streets and in residential areas and run-down districts, matters are different, though. Jewelry and watches, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals and eating experiences are the top agenda items and that means crowded footpaths, streets clogged by coaches and, in residential buildings where flats have been subdivided to provide cheap overnight accommodation, long lines at lifts.

To add to the distress for residents, some mainlanders have still to learn that smoking is a health hazard and not all are familiar with rules on littering and hygiene. Their presence in such high numbers has increased rents, made public transport less comfortable and dramatically boosted the amount of waste going into landfills.

Whenever these matters are raised, authorities are prone to parrot statistics indicating the importance of tourism to the economy, specifically that it accounts for 4.5 per cent of gross domestic product and provides 6.7 per cent of the workforce. But a responsible government should also think of the community it serves and the need to weigh the benefits of revenue and job creation against the inconvenience caused to society.