Excerpted from the Hong Kong Career Guide
In the wake of regional financial
setbacks and the negative impact of the SARS crisis, the government
set its sights on boosting tourism to Hong Kong as a way of
encouraging economic recovery. The government’s aggressive promotion
of its city as a world-class vacation destination is paying off in
big ways. Not only do most economic experts agree that Hong Kong’s
tourism industry has become a main factor driving the economy, it
also gives a strong push to other industries.
To overcome financial hardships
following the region’s financial crisis in 1997, the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government developed a
strategy aimed at economic recovery that would focus on the
development of tourism. In recent years, tourism created about 25,000
new jobs. Annual visitors reached an all time high of 25.5 million
in 2006. Tourists from the Mainland accounted for 54 percent of
total arrivals since travel restrictions have been greatly relaxed.
Visitors from the Mainland are proving to be a potent force in Hong
Kong’s recovery story. Their pattern of spending shows that they are
a very powerful group of consumers, said Yuwa Hedrick-Wong,
Asia-Pacific economic advisor for MasterCard Inc. He said that a
typical Mainland visitor spends on average $987 USD more than
tourists from Europe and North America.
This is just a sample of what
you'll find in the complete Hong Kong guide.
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Tourism and Leisure
