Hong Kong restaurant receipts over Mid-Autumn Festival dropped 10 per cent from a year ago as residents headed across the border, but a tourism industry veteran expressed optimism that the coming National Day holiday would bring in mainland Chinese tourists.
Simon Wong Ka-wo, president of the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades, said on Wednesday that catering businesses saw a 10 to 15 per cent decline during the Mid-Autumn Festival period, compared with last year.
“The main reason is that a large number of Hong Kong residents travel to the mainland, or spend the long weekend in other Chinese cities or Southeast Asia,” he told a radio show.
“There is a huge and obvious gap in the number of departures compared to the number of arrivals.”
According to data from the Immigration Department, more than 818,000 Hong Kong residents left the city between Sunday and Tuesday, with 88 per cent of the trips made through land border crossings to the mainland.
