The balancing act of tourism: outbound versus inbound travelers

Hong Kong is facing a dilemma as more locals are spending their dollars outside of the city than what the visitors are bringing in.

Relaxed visa/permit restrictions for locals and foreign residents alike is making it easier for travel to the mainland while inbound traffic crossing the boundary is low budget and spending less on accommodation and food.

Tourism is an important pillar for Hong Kong’s economy. In pre-COVID times, tourism accounted for about four per cent of the territory’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and provided for about six per cent of total employment.

In Hong Kong’s heydays, the city saw about 65 million tourists in 2018, of which 51 million came from the mainland. It was boom time for retailers and restaurants. Long queues of mainland shoppers would line the streets along Canton Road and elsewhere waiting to buy luxury items from Gucci, Prada, Tiffany’s and other high-end stores which set up shop in Hong Kong to tap this lucrative market.

Today many restaurants and retail outlets are closing down, especially in the boundary towns of Sheung Shui and Yuen Long. The market is no longer there, and high rental costs make it almost impossible to survive.

During the 2025/2026 festive season, Hong Kong saw a 25.6 per cent rise in inbound trips on New Year’s Day 2026 (664,338 trips), but this was still countered by a massive 515,954 outbound exits on the same day.

Winston Yeung, chair of the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants & Related Trades, told local media that business was sluggish during the Christmas holiday, with some restaurant owners calling it “the slowest business at Christmas over the past 10 years.”

Unfortunately, the local market is not propping up the tourism outlets. Instead, the locals are traveling in large numbers to Shenzhen and Macau and other parts of China for day trips or extended holidays, thereby providing a leakage in the local economy.

While Hong Kong received more than an estimated 45 million visitors last year, more than about 100 million departures were recorded by the Immigration Department of locals leaving Hong Kong by plane, train or bus mainly to the mainland (75 per cent), and to other major Asian destinations.

Hong Kong has 320 hotels offering 92,907 rooms, according to the Hong Kong Tourism Board. Despite mainlanders’ choice of more budget accommodation, occupancy rates for the hotel industry remained high at 88 per cent last year. The major hotels are not affected by the change in mainlanders’ preferences as they rely more on the affluent international tourist, visiting Hong Kong for business, conventions or holidays.

Property developer, Caldwell Banker Richard Ellis (CBRE) says Hong Kong’s hospitality market currently presents various investment-ready assets including rare investment opportunities for upper upscale and luxury hotels. These high-end properties are particularly attractive due to their resilience, as they are less reliant on Chinese group travelers and enjoy sustained spending power among affluent individual travelers and international visitors. This makes them attractive for investors seeking stable returns in a dynamic market.

To encourage locals to spend more at home and at the same time provide a bonus for tourists, Hong Kong has organised a series of mega events, many held in the new sports stadium on the site of the old Kai Tak airport in Kowloon. Traditional events in 2026 will include the French May Arts festival in March, Hong Kong Book Fair in July, Hong Kong performing Arts Expo in October, the World Snooker Grand Prix in February, and, of course, the international dragon boat races in June.

Blockbusters will include BlackPink World tour in January, the Hong Kong marathon, which draws in runners and their supports from around the world, and the Hong Kong Tennis Open also in January.

That is good for the inbound and outbound tourists alike. But more needs to be done to tip the tourism scales to a surplus for Hong Kong’s economy to grow at a faster pace. As the saying goes charity starts at home, so it is up to us as local residents who have reaped the benefits of the city to spend more in local restaurants and retail outlets than spend it elsewhere. Support local enterprises. After all, the restaurants in Hong Kong are ranked among the best in the world and are tax free as against a value-added tax applied to restaurants and shops in the mainland.

Mark Pinkstone

** The blog article is the sole responsibility of the author and does not represent the position of our company. **

Ninety legislators will be sworn into office this week, 35 of whom will be taking the oath of office for the first time. It will be a combined act of patriotism, a far cry from the swearing in ceremony in 2016 when four potential lawmakers created their own oaths advocating self-determination and were subsequently disqualified from office.

The western media, including some in Hong Kong, brand “patriotism” as a bad thing for Hong Kong, inferring that there is no “opposition” in the legislature. But they are wrong. The legislators have their own mind and will vote according to their conscience.

Four pieces of legislation proposed by the government have not passed the test and were voted out while many others were heavily debated by the legislators. Regardless of what London’s Guardian newspaper and others say, Hong Kong does have a meaningful opposition.

It is unfortunate that the local Democratic Party, seen by the west as the “opposition,” did not field any candidates in the recent elections and eventually closed down. The choice was theirs and their recent actions indicate they did not intend to follow the rules of the council.

The Legislative Council is a place where lawmakers are elected to serve the people, not to use it as a platform for subversion as had happened in the past.

In 2017 four lawmakers – Long Hair Leung Kwok-hung, Nathan Law, Lau Siu-lai and Edward Yiu – were stripped of their seats for failing to take their oaths of office in a “sincere and solemn” manner. They used props and amended the oath to suit their purpose. Others followed, including student Agnes Chow who also failed taking the oath of office but later jailed on subversion charges. The quartet’s disqualification followed the highly publicized ousting of two localist lawmakers, Baggio Leung and Yau Wai-ching, whose oath-takings involved anti-China banners and usage of derogatory wartime slurs for China.

Together, the quartet had mustered 185,727 votes in the 2016 elections and their selfishness left their followers void of leadership. Their actions were that of self-interest, to achieve their own hidden goals, and not to serve the people who put them in the seats of power. They abused their positions.

Obviously foreign forces had infiltrated the legislature and political unrest ensued as attempts were being made to unseat the base of Hong Kong’s parliament. In July 2020 the government announced that the nominations for 15 candidates were declared invalid due to their objection to the national security law or were sincere in statements involving separatism. And on November 11, 2020, Dennis Kwok, a founding member of the Civic Party and a representative of the legal profession in the council, was accused of delaying the legislative proceedings and passage of bills and was subsequently disqualified along with follow lawmakers Alvin Yeung, Kwok Ka-ki and Kenneth Leung. Just hours later 15 fellow lawmakers resigned in protest.

Kwok was later charged with collusion and fled to Canada and then to the US with a HK$1 million bounty on his head.

The festering germ of dissent even spread to the local district councils who also used their positions to undermine the government.

It had to stop and in March 2021, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (SCNPC) approved changes to the Hong Kong’s electoral system allowing only patriots to serve the government and the people of Hong Kong.

What publications like Hong Kong Free Press, The Washington Post, London’s Financial Times etc. don’t understand is that Hong Kong is a target by the five-eyes network of spies and clandestine operators, led by the US and including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The ultimate target is, of course, China. By crippling Hong Kong and especially its law-making process, it can cripple China and hamper its progressive growth.

These publications will continue to use Hong Kong “Patriots only” legislature as a slur, not as a compliment. It’s in their DNA to be anti-Hong Kong/China. They are the vehicles of the west to bring discord to Hong Kong with total disregard to fact.

But “patriots only” apply to every democracy in the world. No place could be more patriotic than the US where the stars and stripes (the US flag) hang from the porches of almost every household. And legislators in all democracies have to swear allegiances to the country and their constitution. And like Hong Kong, they are vetted to ensure their allegiances are true to the country before standing for election.