Hong Kong Tourism Board Executive Director, Dane Cheng, said that the 2019 totals will likely come in around 56 million after a steep drop in visitors was recorded in November.
Hong Kong last saw a tourism decline in 2016 but November 2019 arrivals plummeted by 56% (to 2.65 million), representing a 39% drop in visitors during the second half of the year following anti-government protests which were staged in the city.
It had posted a 14% increase in the first six months, Cheng said, but with protests set to continue, Ricky Tse Kam-ting, founding president of the Hong Kong Inbound Tour Operators’ Association said tourism figures could get worse: “I have been in the industry for 40 years, and the situation now is the worst. It’s like a long war with no end in sight”.
