Lunar New Year break to attract over 1 million mainland China visitors to Hong Kong; checkpoints to extend hours

“For inbound, we are quite happy with the estimates,” Yeung added. “Those coming know there is the night parade on the first day, and then the fireworks on the second day and the government also has special arrangements for the border facilities.”

The Immigration Department said it expected 7.5 million trips by Hongkongers and tourists starting on February 9, Lunar New Year’s Eve, until February 17.

It said there would be 6 million trips through the city’s land boundary control points with the mainland.

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The fourth day of the new year, February 13, was expected to be the busiest with 607,000 trips in and out, the department added.

Hong Kong will hold a Lunar New Year parade on Saturday in Tsim Sha Tsui and police have estimated a turnout of about 44,000 people for the event.

The fireworks show, the first in four years, is scheduled for 8pm on Sunday at Victoria Harbour. Police did not have an estimate for how many would turn up, but added there were 400,000 onlookers in 2019.

Police said road closures and crowd control measures would be in place over the two days of celebrations and border crossings will open longer hours.

The Shenzhen Bay checkpoint, linking Western areas of Hong Kong with Shenzhen, will be open 24 hours a day from Lunar New Year’s Eve to February 13.

The Lo Wu control point, which is connected to the East Rail line, will remain open until 2am on February 9 and 11. The last train to Lo Wu will leave Admiralty at 12.56am on both days.

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The government said the Lo Wu checkpoint would handle 80 per cent, or 6 million, out of 7.5 million trips during the holiday.

The hotel industry also geared up for a boom in business.

Timothy Chui Ting-pong, executive director of the Hong Kong Tourism Association, said hotel bookings for the weekend from February 9 to 11 were “ideal,” and the expected occupancy rate was about 90 per cent.

The bulk of the visitors would be from the mainland, but levels still had not fully recovered to pre-coronavirus levels, he added.

Jack Cheung Ki-tang, director of CTS HK Metropark Hotels Management, said the group’s properties were about 80 per cent booked over the holiday, with an average stay of three to four nights.

“Business is obviously better than the last holiday, which was Christmas,” he said.

“That’s not a holiday on the mainland, and Hong Kong’s tourists currently remain mainly from across the border.”

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Cheung added the reservation situation remained “more or less the same” compared with the National Day “golden week” break, and that business so far this year had been “better than expected”.

He said rooms across the various price ranges were performing equally well.

“Accommodation is considered a necessity to most tourists, so they will factor that into their budget no matter what, unlike shopping and spending on luxury goods,” Cheung said.

Online travel agency Klook said it had seen an 80 per cent year-on-year growth for inbound bookings, including flights and hotels for February 9 to 11, with South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, the mainland and Japan the top five for tourists over the eight-day holiday.

The top three attractions for mainland visitors were Disneyland, the fireworks display at Harbour City and the Hong Kong Palace Museum.

Visitors had spent an average of HK$1,500 (US$192) per person per purchase.

Professor Terence Chong Tai-leung, executive director of Chinese University’s Lau Chor Tak Institute of Global Economics and Finance, said the number of visitors to Hong Kong was generally on the rise, but there was still “much room for growth”.

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He said only 34 million people visited in 2023, compared with 65 million in 2018.

“We [should] expect more tourists to come this year,” he said. “Restaurant business grew by 7 per cent last year, so overall we have net gains from tourists.”

Yeung said group tours heading out of the city were expected to be around 60 per cent of pandemic levels – around 1,800 tour groups over the eight-day Lunar New Year period.

She added a lack of flights compared with 2019 and a decision by the high-speed rail operator to stop accepting group tour reservations from late January to this month to ensure smooth running of services over the busy travel period, as well as economic factors, had affected demand.

Yeung said people were travelling to the northern mainland city of Harbin to go skiing, as well as northern parts of Europe, such as Finland and Denmark.

She added Japan remained a popular destination, but tours to the country had flatlined after the New Year’s Day earthquake which killed more than 200 people.

Klook said the top five destinations for travellers from Hong Kong were Japan, the mainland, Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea.

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Yazmin Leung, 35, who works in the legal sector, said she would visit Bangkok for five days.

“I went to Hokkaido [in Japan] for skiing over Christmas and took a few trips to other parts of the country all throughout last year,” she said.