No tourists in Hong Kong

As the title suggests things are looking a little grim in Hong Kong regarding the tourism industry, but that is only a given, considering the protests that happened last year (which seemingly are picking right back up now that the quarantine situation is slowly relaxing) and the Coronavirus pandemic, worked together in reducing the amount of tourists that wanted to come to the region in the first place.

Now with the quarantine measures slowly relaxing in different countries things are slowly going back to normal, which means that the protests are apparently starting right back up again, which most likely will not entice tourists to actually want to go to Hong Kong for a visit.

There were only about 4,100 arrivals for the month because of the global lockdown, the Hong Kong Tourism Board revealed on Friday. That works out as about 130 on average each day.

There were 5.57 million arrivals in April 2019.

The article goes on to look at the gross domestic product (GDP) of Hong Kong and said that there was a massive drop of nearly 9 percent, which apparently was predicted by the Hong Kong government, and will not help with the current unemployment situation and the recession that the city is experiencing. The thing though is that basically all countries around the world are probably dealing with a similar situation, though I personally think that the protests started the problem and will continue causing issues for the tourism sector, which in turn will continue creating a downwards spiral for the GDP in Hong Kong. Of course the Coronavirus did not help the situation, but it simply made a bad situation worse, I believe that Hong Kong will not entirely recover from either of these things and instead will have to rely on a different sector to make up the GDP in the future. It’s a difficult situation for those who are being negatively affected by what is happening and the lack of tourists visiting.

The article continues on a gives a rather detailed account of the amount of tourists, or the lack thereof, that came to Hong Kong and the general effect this drop in numbers has on Hong Kong as a whole. It also talks about the help that the government is giving to Hong Kong residents by creating a subsidiary payment plan, which should help those who need the money stay afloat.

In an attempt to bail out the economy, the government launched a HK$290 billion (US$37.2 billion) relief package that accounted for 9.5 per cent of GDP.

The question then really becomes what are the plans that the Hong Kong government has for the future of the region? What can or will they do to ensure that things don’t get worse and instead will get better? Sadly it seems like there are no answers for these questions in the article, and overall the Hong Kong government has yet to create a plan that will help the economy improve in the future.