People at The White Stag bar in Wan Chai during the Hong Kong Sevens rugby tournament in 2018. Photo: Dickson Lee
Opinion
April Zhang
April Zhang
Face it, Hong Kong’s bars won’t recover unless enough expats return
The expatriates and international travellers who went away have mostly been replaced by mainlanders – but hanging out in bars is a predominantly Western social practice
I was in Wan Chai lately for some open mic events. The once bustling Lockhart Road and Jaffe Road were very quiet. The space vacated in 2021 by the Coyote Bar & Grill, after being a popular Wan Chai fixture for 23 years, remains vacant.
The plight of bars in Hong Kong is clear: the Covid-19 pandemic hit them really hard and they have never fully recovered.
The latest government statistics released on May 6 confirmed my anecdotal experience. The bar trade was the worst performer of the entire restaurant sector in the first quarter. While the whole industry saw a revenue increase of 2.3 per cent year on year, bars recorded a steep drop of 17.8 per cent.
Bar operators are trying to do something about it. Earlier this month, the Hong Kong Bar and Club Association launched a lucky draw with prizes worth HK$500,000 (US$64,000), and promised more discounts and offers during the holidays.
Association chairman Chin Chun-wing attributed the loss of business at bars to customers preferring to spend on the mainland and said he hoped the lucky draw would attract more Hongkongers back to the city’s bars.
He is probably in for a disappointment. Industry expert and nightlife magnate Allan Zeman criticised the lucky draw campaign as “desperate”. He urged the local industry to focus on providing premium services and experiences worth paying for, for example, through attractive decor. He lamented that “not a lot of people have the charisma to do that”.
I have a different view. Compared to before Covid-19 hit, there are fewer people frequenting Hong Kong’s bars. Since the city’s population has returned to pre-pandemic levels and tourists are coming back, this can only be explained by there being a smaller number of expatriate residents and foreign visitors now.
Hanging out in bars is a common social practice in many Western cultures, not so much among the Chinese.
During the pandemic, many expatriate residents left Hong Kong because of the government’s draconian measures, which also caused many multinational companies to relocate. The hotel quarantine policy also cut off nearly all foreign visitors. Consequently, bars lost many regular patrons.
As Hong Kong opened its doors again after the pandemic, many Chinese from the mainland came to settle in the city – but not so many expatriates. As tourists returned, again, while some Western visitors have come back, mainland visitors make up the majority.
The city’s bar business was quite stable until the pandemic hit and it went down dramatically. After pandemic restrictions were lifted last year, business rebounded but only to 76 per cent of what it was in 2018, lower than the 92 per cent recovery of the entire restaurant sector. Before the pandemic, bar takings consistently made up 1.5 per cent of the restaurant sector’s total receipts – today, they account for barely 1 per cent.
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Hongkongers hunt for roast chicken, soap and more bargains at US warehouse store in mainland China
Hongkongers hunt for roast chicken, soap and more bargains at US warehouse store in mainland China
True, many Hongkongers go to the mainland to dine and shop nowadays. But this spending shift is not the real reason for the poor business in bars. If it were so, the entire restaurant sector would have shown a similar degree of decline. The reality is that business in bars has shrunk simply because its customer base, namely expatriate residents and foreign visitors, is smaller.
Yet bringing back expatriates is difficult. Beijing’s passing of the national security law in Hong Kong in 2020 did not help. Neither did Hong Kong’s passing of its domestic Article 23 national security legislation in March nor the recent court injunction against the protest song “Glory to Hong Kong”. Several Western governments have issued travel advisories for Hong Kong warning of broad and arbitrary local laws.
Rightly or wrongly, the perception of Hong Kong in the West is increasingly negative and people are questioning if Hong Kong is “safe”. Given this broad context, any effort to revive business in bars to where it was pre-pandemic will be a tall order.
Unless Hong Kong’s overall environment is seen as becoming more conducive to expatriates, the local bar scene will continue to struggle.
April Zhang is the founder of MSL Master and the author of the Mandarin Express textbook series and the Chinese Reading and Writing textbook series
