As the pro-democratic movement in Hong Kong doesn’t seem to slow down and demonstrations even caused the closure of the airport, fewer tourists decide to visit the city. The drop in the number of guests is to set a new sad record.
The demonstrations last more than two months at the moment (starting from June 16), encouraging more than two million people to join the protest movement and causing a general strike. Moreover, protesters sieged the police headquarters and stormed the council building. Arrests, tearing gas, riots this is definitely not what tourists want to see when they travel abroad. Naturally, many foreigners choose to refrain from visiting this Asian gateway city. As a result, flight bookings to Hong Kong from the rest of Asia have fallen by 20.2%.
At the beginning of the demonstration (June 16-29), flight bookings didn’t show a double-digit decrease and fell by 9.0%. By the middle of July (June 30 July 13), the drop became even less negative, estimating only 2.2% year-on-year. However, the following three and a half weeks were a nightmare for the tourism industry of the city. In the period from July 14 to August 9, there was a dramatic decrease in the number of flight bookings 33.4%. Hong Kong hotels and the travel industry in whole performed well in the first half of the year, reaching an increase in bookings of 6.6%. Naturally, the protests destroyed any hope about a profitable year.
The recorded data doesn’t include China and Taiwan because these countries made fewer bookings to Hong Kong due to the Dragon Boat Festival. In 2019, the festival started 11 days earlier than a year ago. This year, the festival started at the end of June. By the way, long-haul bookings to Hong Kong from June 16 to August 9 were 4.7% lower than during the same period of 2018.
Experts do not see the situation to recover anytime soon. At the beginning, travelers were thinking the tensions were temporary, but last weeks proved them wrong. Nowadays, travelers do not expect the situation to resolve in the nearest future, so they prefer to cancel their trips to Hong Kong and wait. Moreover, the data collected doesn’t include this week’s events when all flights were canceled and the police were clearing to airport from protestors. The city’s hotels and other businesses targeted at tourists are likely to have a poor performance this year.