The View | Coronavirus takes a heavy toll on the world’s most expensive office market – Hong Kong’s Central district

In global real estate markets, the retail and hospitality sectors are the biggest casualties of the unprecedented turmoil caused by Covid-19. An internal survey of real estate adviser Savills’ research heads in 24 countries, conducted at the end of last month, found that the sharpest falls in investment activity this year have been in the hotel and retail sectors.

Nowhere are the problems of the retail and hospitality industries more acute than in Hong Kong, which fell into recession in the third quarter of last year for the first time in a decade.

Long before the epidemic took hold, the two sectors were reeling from the devastation wrought by last year’s mass anti-government protests, which scared off tourists (particularly mainland visitors which make up 80 per cent of annual arrivals and are traditionally the biggest spenders) and caused hotel occupancy rates to plummet. Hong Kong retail sales have been contracting at a double-digit pace since last July, data from Bloomberg show.

Yet, the succession of shocks suffered by the territory – China’s sharp slowdown, the trade war, the political crisis and now the fallout from Covid-19 – have also exacted a heavy toll on the office market.