“With Hong Kong resuming normalcy, residents are more willing to dine out during the holiday season,” said Winnie Chan Wun-yin, association manager at the Federation of Hong Kong Hotel Owners, whose members run 133 hotels in the city.

She added that hotel restaurants were seeing encouraging reservations for the festive season from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day, although prices were up slightly because of higher food and transport costs.

The federation’s members, who account for more than nine in 10 hotel rooms, were also pleased with staycation bookings which had hit 70 to 80 per cent for most.

With tourism drying up over the past three years, Hong Kong hotels have depended more on residents checking in for a break and long-staying guests.

“Of course we can’t compare with the time before the pandemic, when travellers were our main customers,” Chan said.

More rooms were available this year as the easing of pandemic restrictions have meant no more designated quarantine hotels for arriving travellers.

“Some hotels are still working hard to promote their Christmas staycation packages,” she said.

After almost three years of strict pandemic restrictions, Hong Kong has eased its rules, allowing all travellers to move about freely if they are free of Covid-19. They must still do a polymerase chain reaction test on arrival at the airport and on the third day of their stay, as well as daily rapid antigen tests for the first five days after touching down in the city.

Welcoming the changes, the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong expected more business travellers to arrive soon.

At least half the 80,000 people who visited Hong Kong in October came for business. The council expected their number to double next month.

Chan said it was too soon to see an increase in visitors, but expected more to come next month and in February on holiday and to visit friends and family.

Song Haiyan, associate dean and chair professor at Polytechnic University’s School of Hotel and Tourism Management, said the industry was “very excited” about the changes to the city’s pandemic rules, which coincided with mainland China easing its zero-Covid policy.

“We expect to see the borders between Hong Kong and the mainland open for tourists very soon,” he said.

Song also expected hotels to enjoy a big rise in bookings for festive buffets and staycations over this Christmas season compared with the last two years, thanks to the relaxed rules.

“Hong Kong locals will stay to celebrate Christmas with relatives and friends without fear of Covid-19 restrictions,” he said. “Many overseas Hongkongers will also be visiting Hong Kong and they will, to a large extent, compensate for the loss of residents travelling abroad during the holidays.”

Ibis, a three-star hotel, said room bookings had gone up over the past several months and it was optimistic about the Christmas season.

Manager Rick Hung Wing-sai said: “Occupancy rates this year are likely to reach 70 or 80 per cent.”

Some others were still waiting for the borders with mainland China to reopen fully, for a more sustained recovery.

“Our overall business remains unchanged and somewhat grim, because the mainland border is still closed,” said Hilton Chan, manager of M1 North Point, a three-star hotel. “But we have been getting more foreign guests from other countries as Hong Kong has reopened.”

The Christmas buffet at five-star hotels like The Peninsula in Tsim Sha Tsui and Four Seasons in Central has been fully booked from as early as last month, while many others sold out by early December.

Checks with hotels showed that reservations have been made mainly by Hongkongers celebrating in family groups, as well as some couples and expatriates.

Eunice Cheung-Reece, 34, a stay-home mother, spent almost HK$4,000 to book a buffet meal for herself, her 39-year-old husband who works in investment banking, and their five-year-old twin boys at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Christmas Eve.

“Christmas is my favourite season of the year but we didn’t do much in the past three years obviously because of the pandemic,” Cheung-Reece said.

The hotel charges HK$1,288 per adult and HK$688 per child, and she made her reservation in mid-November.

“We’ve been so cooped up in the past few years so we decided to embrace the festivity along with the lifting of restrictions,” she said.

“It will be the first time for our boys to have a buffet. I have already planned their matching Christmas outfits.”

Steffan Horsford, 35, an American investor relations consultant who has been working in Hong Kong for four years, spent about HK$20,000 to surprise his girlfriend with a staycation at Rosewood Hong Kong from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day.

“My parents in Maryland are travelling to Europe this year, so I don’t need to go home for the holidays,” he said.

“My girlfriend has been working so hard for the last few months, so I was like, let’s just chill a little bit over the Christmas holidays.”