Hong Kong protests: traveller numbers at city airport in biggest drop since 2009 as unrest batters tourism
- As citywide unrest deterred tourism in the second half of 2019, 3.2 million fewer travellers passed through than during the previous year
- Airport falls behind Guangzhou and Shanghai rivals for first time ever
Hong Kong International Airport recorded its biggest fall in passenger numbers in a decade last year to fall behind its Guangzhou and Shanghai rivals for the first time ever, as anti-government protests hit tourism to the city hard, new figures revealed on Sunday.
Still one of Asia’s busiest airports, HKIA handled 71.53 million travellers in the tumultuous year, 3.2 million down on 2018, according to figures released on Sunday by the Airport Authority.
The 4.2 per cent fall is the biggest drop since the global financial crisis caused a 5 per cent decline in 2009.
Travellers were still staying away in the final month of the year, when 5.7 million passengers used the airport, some 813,000 fewer than in December 2018.
We went through a challenging year in 2019
The year started well for the airport, passenger numbers to July up 1.03 million on the same period of 2018. But that gave way to decline once the protests took hold, sparked by opposition to proposed extradition legislation.