She said the estimation was based on information gathered from the catering and hotel industries.

Some 840,000 mainland visitors arrived in Hong Kong in the first three days of the Labour Day holiday in 2019, a five-year high at the time. About 600,000 mainlanders visited in the same three-day period in 2018.

“We have manpower shortage problems in terms of Hong Kong’s capacity to receive tourists,” Yeung said.

“We are making comprehensive preparations with the hotel and catering industries, and will coordinate with different government departments to do our best in terms of tourist reception.”

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Yeung said airlines were still operating at half their capacity compared with pre-pandemic levels in 2019, and she expected mainland tourists would arrive mainly through pier checkpoints and land crossings.

Winnie Chan Wun-yin, association manager at the Federation of Hong Kong Hotel Owners, whose members provide 89,000 rooms in the city, said the industry could still cope with the influx despite the long-term issue of understaffing.

“The industry has been making special arrangements in advance to ensure there is enough manpower during the golden week,” she said.

“Some members have asked staff to multitask on different hotel duties, while some either arrange for employees to take leave before May or compensate them with time off after the peak period.”

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She added that golden week bookings had reached 70 per cent in mid-April and were expected to hit 90 per cent for some hotels in prime areas including Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay.

“We haven’t been able to do business normally in the past three years,” Chan said, referring to the drastic drop in tourist numbers when borders were closed during the pandemic.

“Even though we are facing staff shortages, we hope to do our best to serve those tourists during the golden week and I believe we have enough room capacity to meet demand.”

However, Ray Chui Man-wai, president of trade group the Institute of Dining Art, said manpower shortages had forced restaurants to cut their operating capacity and that would continue during the golden week.

“There is no way we can cope with such a huge influx during the Labour Day peak period,” he said.

“Some eateries have no choice but to let customers wait in a queue. People may leave but they will still come back. We don’t want to risk losing them by providing bad service and food.”

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He said manpower in the industry had dropped 27 per cent from 260,000 in 2018 to 190,000 last year, and he hoped the government would allow imported workers to be hired.

“We want imported workers not to save costs but to hire enough employees for our daily operations. Some chain eateries just serve dinner and give up on lunch hours and operate 70 per cent of their tables based on their available manpower,” Chui said.

“Some restaurants even close for a day every week just to let their employees rest as they are always multitasking given insufficient kitchen and floor staff.”

Tommy Tam Kwong-shun, chairman of the Society of IATA Passenger Agents, said he expected flights from the mainland to the city to be full.

He had not heard complaints about flight bookings from local travel agencies since reservation and ticketing work was handled by their mainland counterparts.

The government has been aggressively promoting the city for tourism, launching the “Hello Hong Kong” campaign in February to attract at least 1.5 million visitors.

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The campaign includes giving away 700,000 free air tickets, spending vouchers and special events, with another HK$100 million (US$12.74 million) worth of coupons for drinks, dining and shopping for visitors.

A Hong Kong Tourism Board spokesman earlier said it partnered with national broadcasters and social media platforms such as Weibo, WeChat and Xiaohongshu to promote the campaign. Registration for the air ticket giveaways to mainland visitors from 14 cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu opened earlier.

Mainlanders made up almost four in five of the 315,276 visitors over the recent four-day Easter holiday, the city’s first major break since the last remaining Covid-19 restrictions were lifted in February. They also made up four-fifths of the 2.4 million visitors last month.

Before the pandemic, mainlanders made up the bulk of Hong Kong’s tourists with 51 million visiting in 2018 alone.