ENG-2009 — Page 365

Chapter 15

Travel and Tourism

―

Hong Kong's tourism industry continued to develop in 2009. Construction work started on two major projects the new cruise terminal at Kai Tak and the Hong Kong Disneyland expansion. A Noah's Ark attraction and the '1881 Heritage' (the former Marine Police Headquarters in Tsim Sha Tsui) were opened, while Ocean Park and the Ngong Ping 360 cableway introducted new attractions. A Mega Events Fund was established to support the staging of large-scale arts, cultural and sports events to further add to Hong Kong's attraction as a tourist destination.

For Hong Kong tourism, 2009 was a challenging year. Owing to the global economic downturn and the impact of human swine influenza, visitor arrivals registered a decline of 3.4 per cent in the first half of 2009 compared with the same period in the previous year. Yet the tourism industry remained resilient and the tide. began to turn in the second half of the year following signs of economic recovery and receding concerns about influenza. Visitor arrivals started to rebound in August and brought total visitor arrivals for the year to 29.59 million, a slight increase of 0.3 per cent over 2008.

The Mainland continued to be the largest source of tourists. A total of 17.96 million Mainland visitors came to Hong Kong in 2009, an increase of 6.5 per cent. Despite a reduction in visitor arrivals from long-haul markets such as the Americas (-6.9 per cent), Europe (-5.9 per cent), Africa (-13.2 per cent) and Australasia (-7.2 per cent), emerging markets such as Russia (+15.7 per cent), India (+4.6 per cent) and the Middle East (+2.0 per cent) performed well. In particular, visitor arrivals from Russia surged by 54.2 per cent after the implementation of visa-free entry on July 1, 2009.

Major Tourism Developments

While work on family and business travel was sustained, special effort was made in four other areas meetings, incentive travel, conventions and exhibitions (MICE), cruise tourism, mega events and green tourism.

MICE

Hong Kong is an international finance centre, an Asia-Pacific aviation hub and the gateway to the mainland of China. Coupled with world-class convention and

293