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Tourism
Hong KongHong Kong economy

Coronavirus: Can Ocean Park, Hong Kong Disneyland survive as they woo residents to make up for millions of missing visitors?

  • Loss-making theme parks slash ticket prices, add new activities to attract locals
  • Survival of star attractions hangs in the balance after Covid-19 forced them to close 200 days

Reading Time:6 minutes
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With Covid-19 keeping mainland tourists out, Hong Kong’s financially struggling theme parks are focusing on locals out of necessity. Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen
Kanis Leung
Meerkat stars Charles, Jeff, Yan and the rest of their family keep darting about the newly opened African-styled pavilion at Ocean Park when caretaker Chau Wang-fei arrives.
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The squirrel-sized animals immediately stand in a line on a rock and wait for him to put worms into their mouths, with a little one trying to get his attention by patting his leg.

“We are like friends,” said Chau, 32. “Meerkats live in a family. They often resist outsiders. When they touch us, it means they have begun treating us as one of them.”

The 43-year-old theme park in Aberdeen is more than a workplace for Chau. When he was a boy, his mother took him there every week to see the animals, sparking a lifelong attachment.

Chau Wang-fei, supervisor of Ocean Park’s Little Meerkat and Giant Tortoise Adventure visited the theme park nearly every week as a child. Photo: Xiaomei Chen
Chau Wang-fei, supervisor of Ocean Park’s Little Meerkat and Giant Tortoise Adventure visited the theme park nearly every week as a child. Photo: Xiaomei Chen
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Despite securing a HK$5.4 billion (US$700 million) government lifeline in May to avoid bankruptcy and stay afloat for another year, questions about the park’s longer-term survival remain, as four years of consecutive losses have been compounded by the coronavirus pandemic.

Chau, for one, is saddened by talk that Ocean Park might close one day. “I will definitely miss this place,” he said.

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