Hong Kong tourism bounces back, with visitor numbers up 52% year on year Hong Kong attracted more than 25 million tourists in the first seven months of the year, a 52 per cent year-on-year increase, and the number of visitors from outside mainland China also shot up by 71 per cent. The Hong Kong Tourism Board said on Thursday it planned to continue drone shows and fireworks displays to help lure visitors over peak holiday periods as it announced the latest provisional figures. “On the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the board will present a festival-themed drone show,” the board said. The festival, where people celebrate with family gatherings and by eating mooncakes, falls on September 17 this year. The board added it would stage pyrotechnic displays and a drone show for “Hong Kong WinterFest” in November, as well as a fireworks display for the New Year countdown in December. The special events are part of a campaign tourism authorities started in May to lure more visitors, with each attraction costing about HK$1 million (US$128,000) to stage. The city welcomed more than 3.9 million visitors last month, a 9.3 per cent increase compared with last year, including 3.1 million from the mainland. More than 25 million visitors travelled to Hong Kong between January and July, a 52 per cent increase on the same period last year. The seven-month figure included about 19.3 million mainland tourists, up 47.3 per cent, year on year. The number of non-mainland travellers reached about 5.8 million, a 71.1 per cent increase from the figure recorded between January to July in 2023. More than half of them – about 3.2 million – came from the city’s short-haul market. There were 1.6 million visitors from long-haul flights, 362,000 of them from new markets. The new markets sector covers India, Russia, the Netherlands, Vietnam and six Arab countries. Figures for January to June showed most visitors came from Taiwan, the Philippines and South Korea under the short-haul market category. Most long-haul tourists over the same period came from the United States, Australia, Canada and Britain. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/article/3274637/hong-kong-tourism-bounces-back-visitors-numbers-52-cent-year-year (ICE HONG KONG)

Fonte notizia: South China Morning Post