20 Issues on Travel and Tourism

Meeting with the Commissioner for Tourism

 

General issues

  1. Hong Kong’s international image - World hostility towards China has seriously affected Hong Kong’s ability to stand on its own for international promotion purpose. It is therefore important to go on the offensive and work aggressively with the international travel trade to build up a positive image to counter the bad publicity, so as to encourage more people to visit Hong Kong and return home with a more positive image of Hong Kong. We are at a disadvantage as there is virtually nothing positive reported about Hong Kong in world news and there are far too many distorted views of Hong Kong. We can overcome that not by blaming the media but by bringing more people to Hong Kong to see what Hong Kong really is, so that they can take the right message back. In our message we can also bring in Mainland China as a complementary destination.
  2. Environment and pollution – This has continued to deteriorate and Hong Kong is now in the ranks of Mexico City as one of the world’s worst polluted cities. Until something is done quickly and effectively, Hong Kong will lose its attractiveness to the tourists and the international business and multi-national investors.
  3. Tourism under-performance is cyclical? - There are suggestions by some people that Hong Kong’s tourism is merely going through a cyclical adjustment (for many destinations, this may take 3-5 years to free themselves from the low point of the cycle and tourism is a cyclical industry) after years of much extended success. If this is true, we should be planning about how to handle success once more when the new wave of tourism boom starts. We have to prepare ourselves better this time and have all the necessary infrastructure and supporting elements available and make it longer lasting and not repeat the same mistakes we made before. We have to also ask “How much Government intervention and assistance is necessary and how much of industry’s own self-regulation is desirable this time?”
  4. Education and training – We need better educated and trained people to work in our industry and this has to come in large numbers in order to meet the future demands of the industry, if we believed that tourism will eventually recover and reach new heights within 3 years. We must not be misled into believing that there is an over supply of such talents. We must accurately estimate the future demands for manpower in tourism, on different scales of improved performances within the industry.

    5.  

    Building up strength

  5. Traditional strengths and values of Hong Kong - The traditional strengthens and values of Hong Kong must not be destroyed. They should on the contrary be promoted more aggressively because the same reasons people came here ten years ago are unlikely to change much in real substance ten years later. We can reinforce those values by making them more effective and attractive to visitors vis-a-vis- our competing neighbours but we must also fully understand where our true values are and maintain them in today’s context. In other words, we must retain and improve what we already have and not become too obsessed with what is new.
  6. Emphasis existing inventory of attractions - Existing attractions like this have the advantage of being more centrally located, better known and easier to upgrade. They should be made better use of by helping them to become more successful, adding new facilities and value, increasing their investments and creating new concepts. Rather than developing new attractions which potential for success is unknown, the priority should be on improving our existing attractions and making them more presentable and memorable.
  7. Landmark retention: We must understand visitor expectations. A tourist would queue for 90 minutes to ride on the Cable Car in San Francisco “Because it was San Francisco”, and he would take the Star Ferry “because that is what Hong Kong is famous for”. In this regard the planned removal of the Star Ferry is very disturbing. The Star Ferry is closely associated with Hong Kong.
  8. Product development - Japan does not do much to promote tourism or for that matter, build to attract tourism. They do not even have a national tourism organization in its true sense as HKTA, STB etc. Their explanation was: tourism in Japan is for the Japanese people because their domestic tourism market is 20 times that of international. What they build in Japan for tourism is therefore for the Japanese people and they carry a unique Japanese flavour and culture which also attracts international tourists to experience and share them with the Japanese people. Japan will not build or copy tourism attractions elsewhere. They maintain their own uniqueness. Although Hong Kong is not a country like Japan, the latter’s tourism strategy should provide some food for thought.
  9. City parks, covered walkways and designated pedestrian-only areas – Even Beijing is upgrading the pedestrian system at Wong Fu Jin and many cities around the world are doing the same, especially near shopping areas. In Hong Kong, one sees tourists sitting on the floor and very few places have seats for shoppers, not to mention elderly people. This is not acceptable.
  10. Shopping – The world is full of name brands and even with the variety we have here, which we talk about a lot, New York, London, Tokyo and Las Vegas are easily more superior than Hong Kong even in prices. We have to promote different levels of shopping facilities and cater to the less affluent visitors, who now make up the great majority of our visitors. Promoting Mong Kok, Shenzhen and places like Maritime Square in Tsing Yi etc. should be our new priorities. Name brand shopping should no longer be our first priority especially when places like Kuala Lumpur are trying hard to catch up as the shopping paradise of Asia, if their plan to build massive shopping malls at Government subsidized rates in centrally located areas materializes.
  11. Disney theme park – We support Disney theme park in Hong Kong. However, even with Disney there should be room for others as well, as in the case of Orlando and Anaheim. In fact, both places have more than 30-40 different entertainment parks and theme parks.
  12. Cable cars etc. – Enough of that and people are generally not interested in going after this type of attractions. We should think about how to make Ocean Park more success and allow them to become even better after Disney comes in. It would be a shame to lose Ocean Park.

    13.  

    Visitors and hotels

  13. Performance of hotels – Visitor Arrivals went up almost 10% in July 1999 (first 7 months increase was 11.1% versus same period last year) but hotel occupancy in the same month did not show any improvement. Hotels are obviously not benefiting from the rise in visitors in the same ratio. This raises the question of: are we getting the right kinds of visitors for the economic benefit of Hong Kong? For reference, tourism receipts have continued to slip despite the double digit growth in visitor arrivals.
  14. Visitor arrivals - The percentage of total arrivals who did not stay overnight and merely transited in Hong Kong was as high as 30%. The good connections they get for travel from the border and train stations to CLK for onward travel to their next destinations and the distance away from the city of the new CLK airport prompted this to happen and it applied to both the China market and all other markets as well. This is inevitable if Hong Kong wishes to continue as a hub for regional and international travel. This also means that we are only getting the economic benefit of some 70% visitors who do stay overnight: 50% in HKTA member hotels and the rest in other types of accommodation. With this changing visitor profile, the traditional visitor arrival numbers are losing meaning and require re-interpretation. We need better statistics to show us the true tourism performance and how it is affecting us.
  15. New hotel supply – Government should continue to offer new hotel development opportunities, through providing more sites and streamlining the approval mechanism, to enable private developers to invest in hotels when the opportunities arise in future. Hotel Industry Associations, analysts, surveyors, bankers and HKTA can offer advice and guidance towards the proper reading of future supply and demand projections as well as breakeven and pay back calculations.

    16. New airport
  16. Open skies and lowering of airport charges – These issues should be resolved carefully. Firstly, the inadequacy of an internationally accepted open sky policy which allows all international carriers to have the same opportunity to route their aircraft to Hong Kong on a scheduled and non-scheduled basis, affects our tourism opportunities. The key word is equal opportunity, which should be the governing principle in the review, negotiation and approval process. Secondly, high airport charges are a deterrent to aviation growth. They reflect badly on Hong Kong and offer new opportunities to other competing airports.
  17. New airport capacity utilization – Our new airport is under-utilized since we have lower numbers of arriving visitors and only 55% of them come through CLK, with the rest by road or by sea. What had been originally set out to be a great airport in terms of increasing air traffic for Hong Kong has turned out to be a disappointment and this is putting new pressure on pay back and flexibility in fee levels. The new airport has to think of new ways to improve throughput and encourage usage to benefit the travel industry. There is unfortunately little being done to achieve this. The new airport is not user friendly when it comes to working with the industry.

    18.  

    Institutional issues

  18. Advice on tourism - There is too much talk around about tourism, coming from all walks of life, many of them with little to do with the tourism industry. They travel abroad, see something and come back with a great idea. Tourism planning and the formulation of a total tourism strategy is not about piece meal initiatives but the overall act of offering direction, priority, consistency and co-ordination to tourism management. It is also about providing clear communication, information, legislation and incentives for all that to happen in the private sector as much as possible because they are the ones who will handle the business. While consulting the public or even the industry (which is fragmented and full of self-interest) is important, it is equally important to have qualified people who know the business well on an international scale. World experts in this field are the ones who can lead us into the right direction and take us out of the gloom. The Commissioner’s advisors, for example, are all great but we also need international expertise, coming from people who have a proven track record of having successfully dealt with tourism development and management and carry a reputation for that. With all due respect to our own people, their work cannot be fully accomplished without the further input from those who can inject new concepts and ideas to our industry on an international scale and using best practice management examples.
  19. HKTA – Greater Industry participation at the HKTA, at the levels of the Board, Committees and management, would improve the understanding and communication between HKTA and the industry. Greater pooling of industry resources is also considered highly desirable for HKTA to maximize its own mileage when promoting Hong Kong overseas and this has proved to be highly successful in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand to some extent, Philippines etc.
  20. Business visitors from the Mainland - Many Mainland Chinese encounter problems in accessing Hong Kong visas. This has deterred many business visitors and exhibitors from visiting Hong Kong. As high-spending business visitors and likely repeat-visitors they bring enormous benefits to Hong Kong’s economy. Government and the Tourist Association should liaise with responsible Chinese authorities to assist in the simplification of the visa procedure in the Mainland. More generally, we should examine how tourists from the Mainland can be better handled while they are in Hong Kong.