Hong Kong wants more tourists – but only “the right ones”

Nicky Lam is a real estate agent. Her office is in To Kwa Wan, also known as Potato Bay. To Kwa Wan is a well-known working-class neighborhood in Hong Kong, the Chinese capital. “They’re very noisy,” Lam told the New York Times. “She” means mainland China. The tourists who travel in large numbers in coaches and are dropped off in front of restaurants in the neighborhood for a quick bite to eat before continuing their cheap tour.

Visitors wear white, red and orange hats and smoke cigarettes under a no-smoking policy. Lamb rolls his eyes. She is annoyed with them. She complains that some tourists use her office’s toilet and water dispenser without asking. “A tourist came in and asked for restaurant recommendations,” she adds. “I stared at him and said, ‘This is a real estate agency.'”

Lam is not alone in complaining about the mainland visitors. Hong Kongers have been annoyed by tourists for years: they make too much noise, they obstruct traffic and they ruin the public space by sitting outside and eating their packed lunches. And what gets on your nerves the most: the mainlanders hardly spend any money.

The economy of China’s Special Administrative Region would depend on this money, especially since many Hong Kongers earn their living from it.

No improvement after the pandemic

After three years of a pandemic, strict measures and closed borders, tourism in China is slowly returning. Restaurants and shops were closed for a long time. Many people suffered and lived at the subsistence level.

The government has promised growth to stimulate the economy again. economic growth. And for that, the city of 7.5 million mainly depends on one thing: tourism. That is why the government introduced the so-called ‘cheap travel’: traveling through Hong Kong with a group and a guide for a few days for little money.

But according to Hong Kongers, these cheap trips have attracted the “wrong tourists”. Exactly the mainland Chinese who hardly spend any money.

The tourists you would really like to have – so the ones who spend money – stay away. Because of the lack of flights.

But it’s not just because they don’t spend a lot of money or are loud that visitors from the mainland aren’t welcome. Before the pandemic, wealthy mainland China drove up prices and rents in Hong Kong.

So the people of Hong Kong are frustrated and angry. To the visitors from the mainland – but especially to the government. Because it actually promised them economic growth. But nothing happens and the city continues to fill up with economically uninteresting cheap tourists.

Mutual insults

The tour groups are already causing ridicule on online forums against the government. Users fondly recall the days when locals openly referred to mainlanders traveling to Hong Kong as “grasshoppers.” Because they bought cheaper baby food, medicines and cosmetics in Hong Kong to resell them in China at a higher price.

But the insults go both ways. On social media, mainlanders mock the Mandarin skills of Hong Kongers, who usually speak Cantonese. Still others have posted videos of situations where they felt insulted by restaurant workers for speaking Mandarin.

Miu Wang has been a tour guide for 20 years. She says Hong Kong people are snobs. “I have to take care of dozens of tourists at once,” Wang said of complaints that the tourists behaved rudely. “I can’t control them all,” she adds.

Hong Kong Tourism Minister Kevin Yeung also urged Hong Kong residents to be kinder and more accommodating. And yet at the same time he calls for stricter supervision of visitors. “Tourists fill the streets, but that is a sign of economic growth,” Yeung told the New York Times.

Ms. Guo does not belong to a cheap tour group. She says she is treated much nicer now than when she visited in 2004. She then felt that speaking Mandarin made her a target of bigotry. “I used to feel rejection, indifference, and impatience, especially when talking to waitresses or asking for directions on the street,” she says. “I think that’s because the mainland economy has developed,” she continues. “Hong Kong is not that special in comparison.”