After years of being the top choice for Chinese tourists, Hong Kong has lost out to Japan as the most preferred travel destination over the recently-concluded National Day holiday.
Chinese online travel platform CTrip said Japan was the most popular international travel destination for mainland Chinese tourists during the annual Golden Week holiday (October 1-7), followed by Thailand and South Korea. Hong Kong came in fourth place, trailed by Macao, Taiwan, and the United States.
Compared to last year, the number of Chinese tourists going to Japan during the National Day holiday doubled, according to the China National Tourism Administration. Japan’s popularity among Chinese travelers was already established in the first six months of this year when some 2.18 million Chinese tourists went to Japan, double from the year before.
Despite a slumping economy, Japan is able to attract Chinese tourists with a favorable exchange rate while South Korea targets Chinese travelers with preferential visa and discount policies.
However, only 413,000 mainland Chinese visitors chose to head south to Hong Kong during the first three days of the National Day holiday, a year-on-year decrease of five percent. Hong Kong also had a decrease of 15 percent as a planned destination for mainland tourists during the Golden Week, while it saw decreases of total mainland trips by 17 percent from January to September of this year.
After serving as a top international destination for years, mainland Chinese tourists are starting to choose other spots. Sarah Leung, director of the Hong Kong Tourism Industry Employees General Union, said Hong Kong no longer holds an attraction for travelers from the Mainland.
“Mainland people, especially luxury-goods consumers, have no intention to travel to Hong Kong. They’ve switched to European countries,” said Leung. “It is Hong Kong people’s hostility toward mainland tourists that has led mainlanders to lose interest and trust in Hong Kong.”“It is Hong Kong people’s hostility toward mainland tourists that has led mainlanders to lose interest and trust in Hong Kong.”
Earlier this year, protests against parallel traders targeted average mainland Chinese tourists visiting Hong Kong in a well-publicized campaign.
Furthermore, a 2013 report from the Boston Consulting Group said Chinese mainland tourists will abandon Hong Kong for other international destinations within a decade.
Meanwhile, stores in Japan are becoming even more accommodating of Chinese shoppers by introducing Chinese-speaking staff and signs written in Chinese. Morihiro Matsumoto, sales promotion manager of the Abeno store in the Kintetsu Shopping Center, explained:
Kintetsu Department Store believes that National Day is an important festival to the Chinese people. We have decorated our department store in an special way to celebrate this Chinese national holiday, including the banners with Chinese characters meaning “celebrate the National Day” on them.
However, the news of Japanese stores pandering to Chinese tourists was met with disdain online. In a China Daily post on the story, Chinese netizens called the Japanese stores “extremely disgusting” and “shameless”. One commentator saw the pandering as proof of China’s dominance of Japan, saying, “The Japanese Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China welcomes you!“
The post Chinese Tourists Turn Their Backs on Hostile Hong Kong, Go to Japan Insteadappeared first on The Nanfang.
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