Coronavirus: most Hong Kong hotels record single-digit occupancy as industry faces ‘life or death’ struggle to survive
- Number of tourists arriving drops to daily average of 3,000 in mid-February – from 200,000 in same month last year
- Occupancy rates drop below level of Sars in 2003
Hong Kong hotels face “a critical period of life or death” in February and March as tourist arrivals plummet during the coronavirus outbreak, an owners’ group has said in an urgent plea for government aid.
The Federation of Hong Kong Hotel Owners, which has 86 members running about 200 hotels and employing some 80,000 workers, said on Wednesday that occupancy as a percentage now averaged in the single digits – far worse than experienced during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak of 2003.
Its executive director Michael Li Hon-shing urged Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po to ease the burden on the industry by exempting owners from paying rates and government rent for one year, and offering tax concessions and one-off cash subsidies in his budget next week.
He added that the hospitality sector was at the epicentre of Hong Kong’s tourism slump but had been left out of the government’s relief measures, worth HK$28 billion (US$3.6 billion), announced recently to deal with the outbreak.
“So few rooms are taken up that our members no longer gauge occupancy by percentage, but by room numbers,” Li said. “Now, many full-time hotel staff are taking no-pay leave. I would not be surprised to see businesses closing down next. February and March will be the critical period for their life and death.”