How Cool Is Hongkong In The Spring Festival?

During the Spring Festival, many people choose to travel abroad, but Hongkong's tourism industry has gone through a series of strikes.

According to a number of retailers announced during the Spring Festival in Hongkong and Macao

The Spring Festival in 2016 is probably the most deserted Spring Festival since Hongkong launched its "free ride".

Sasa international recently announced that the company's Spring Festival performance is not ideal, in from February 8 to 14, 2016, the company's retail sales in Hong Kong and Macao fell by 20% over the same period last year.

The company said that the overall decline in the total number of visitors to Hong Kong during the Spring Festival period was mainly due to the fact that the total sales volume of mainland customers dropped by 26%, especially the mainland passengers. The volume of pactions decreased by 18%, and the average amount of each paction fell by 9%.

If we look at the historical data of the past 13 years, Sasa will announce the company's performance during the Spring Festival since 2002. Over the past few years, the total sales volume of the company has rarely declined during the Spring Festival. During the Spring Festival of 2015, the company's first fall, the retail sales in Hong Kong and Macao fell by 10% compared with the same period last year.

Similarly, 01929.HK, a jeweller, has recently updated its retail sales figures during the Spring Festival. Although gold prices began to rise, the "gold rush" did not appear in Hongkong. From January 25th to February 14th, the companies in Hong Kong and Macau were in the market.

The value dropped by 23% compared with the same period, while the same store sales fell 22%, while the same store sales fell 29%, the biggest decline in recent years.

Zhou Dafu's management expects that the retail environment in the fourth quarter will continue to be challenging and its sales performance will be weaker than in the third quarter.

Zhou Dafu chairman Zheng Jiachun said in public that he would not rule out closing individual stores. Once the number of stores was reduced, the manpower would be reduced accordingly. The company announced last year that it would close 7 to 8 Hongkong stores this year.

Yao Sirong, member of the Legislative Council of the Hongkong tourism sector, said that the number of mainland visitors to Hong Kong has declined by 12% over the past second years, six in the first half of the month from twenty-nine to the beginning of the month, and the total number of visitors to Hong Kong has dropped by 10%.

During the Spring Festival, the first Financial Daily reporters found that the streets in Hongkong were relatively deserted, and people's traffic was even less than usual. In many branches of Zhou Dafu, the guests were not too many, but the salesmen were doing nothing else.

Other retail stores are also in a cold business, and the flow of people in shopping malls is not very different from that in peacetime.

In addition to the involvement of the retail industry, even the catering industry in Hongkong has been struggling.

Huang Jiahe, President of the Hongkong food and Beverage Association, recently pointed out that the volume of catering business in Hongkong during the Spring Festival fell by 10% compared with the same period last year. The industry originally expected this data to grow by 8% to 10%. It is expected that the business volume of Hongkong catering industry will drop from 104 billion 400 million HK $in 2015 to less than 100 billion Hong Kong dollars in 2016, which worries the industry.

According to the report submitted by the Hongkong tourism board to the Legislative Council, the number of mainland visitors in 2016 will drop by 3.2%. In 2015, the figure dropped by 3%. The Bureau expects that the per capita consumption of overnight travellers will also drop by 4%, to 6948 Hong Kong dollars this year. During the peak of 2013, the per capita consumption of overnight travelers in Hong Kong has reached HK $8123.

But in fact, the spending power of mainland tourists has not declined. According to the report released by China Tourism Research Institute and Ctrip, the number of outbound tourists will reach 5 million 700 thousand to 6 million people in 2016. If the per capita tourism related expenses are 15 thousand yuan, the cost of Chinese tourists' outbound spring festival may reach 90 billion yuan.