Hong Kong’s annual Wine & Dine Festival reinvents itself as ‘do-it-yourself’ experience
- The expo is leaving behind its former digs on the Central waterfront in favour of self-guided tours, pop-ups and small-scale tastings
- The festival was cancelled two years ago due to anti-government protests, and was held almost entirely online last year because of Covid-19
In 2018, the last time the festival was held in its usual spot along the harbourfront – where restaurants and retailers set up booths selling their wares and offering taste tests – it attracted some 180,000 people.
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Dane Cheng Ting-yat, executive director of the tourism board, said on Tuesday that in spite of the disruptions of the last two years, the city remained a foodie Mecca.
“With the Covid-19 situation, we have been trying new formats and new perspectives to introduce and promote the fine dining experiences of Hong Kong to the world,” Cheng said, describing last year’s mostly online Wine & Dine Festival as “a very successful” event.
This year’s iteration, the festival’s 12th, will cost HK$15 million (US$1.9 million) to put on, and will bring together more than 400 restaurant partners, with both online and offline events, including wine tours, live-streamed masterclasses, limited pop-ups and dining discounts.
Unlike in years past, the newest edition will stretch on for the whole month of November, and will feature a “City Wine Walk” covering Kennedy Town, Central, Wan Chai and Tsim Sha Tsui.
The self-guided walk, bookings for which open on October 26, allows participants to buy a “tasting pass” that comes with tokens redeemable across 50 bars and restaurants for top-rated wines and special menus.
There will also be nine live-streamed tasting sessions hosted by internationally known experts including wine critic James Suckling and sommelier Nelson Chow.
World class mixologists and chocolate connoisseur Katie Chan will also host a live online event from the Johnnie Walker Bar on the Genting Dream cruise ship.
Foodies can also enjoy live masterclass sessions from 18 local celebrity chefs, priced between HK$1,000 and HK$3,000.
“This year, we are trying something different by bringing the event further into the community, as a ‘do-it-yourself’ [event] for locals to go into the neighbourhoods, taking residents to experience the wine and dining scene in Hong Kong,” Cheng said.
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The city has kept all but three entry checkpoints closed since February 2020, and authorities have imposed up to three weeks of mandatory hotel quarantine on arrivals.
The strict inbound controls were reflected in the number of arrivals, which plummeted 98.2 per cent year on year to just 63,105 people between January and September, down from an already-low 3.5 million in the same period in 2020.
The tourism board has been allocated a marketing budget of HK$1.14 billion for the 2021-22 financial year, even after it was criticised for spending lavishly on promotional events that drew low turnouts in 2014-15 and 2018-19.
