Hong Kong Wants ‘Quality’ Tourists
HONG KONG — One by one the tour buses descended on the blue collar neighborhood in Hong Kong known as To Kwa Wan — literally translated as Potato Bay — unloading throngs of travelers from mainland China outside large restaurants where a quick lunch awaited them inside.
Outfitted in white, red and orange ball caps to denote which tour they belonged to, the visitors crowded the sidewalks, smoked cigarettes under a “No Smoking” sign and bumped into the glass storefront of a real estate office where Nicky Lam, a property agent, was rolling her eyes. “They’re very loud,” she said, complaining that some tourists used her office bathroom without asking.
The recent return of budget mainland tour groups has revived old tensions. Before the pandemic, an influx of mainlanders and their wealth into Hong Kong sent prices soaring, fueling frustrations among residents that sometimes spilled over into bigotry.
In the nearly three years since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law over Hong Kong, criticism of the mainland has often been muted. Now, the public response to the budget tourists — arriving on packages that cost as little as $175 for a two-day visit — has been less than welcoming.
Local residents say the tourists — who tend to travel in groups of two dozen or more — are snarling traffic and blighting public spaces.
Even some members of Hong Kong’s legislature, which is full of pro-Beijing lawmakers, have lost patience. “Can we have some good quality tour groups?” Kitson Yang asked during a recent session.
Before the pandemic and the 2019 pro-democracy protests, mainland visitors powered Hong Kong tourism, comprising nearly 80 percent of all arrivals in 2018. After the city imposed some of the strictest pandemic measures in the world, restaurants, hotels and shops in Hong Kong were starved for business. The arrival of the budget tours coincides with a push to revive tourism in the city of 7.5 million residents. Because of a lack of flights, high-spending tourists have largely stayed away.
On online anti-government forums, the tour groups are providing fodder for ridicule, harking back to the days when some local residents would openly use the slur “locusts” to refer to mainlanders who came to buy cheaper powdered baby formula, medicine and cosmetics to resell in China.
The taunting works both ways. Mainland users of Douyin, the domestic Chinese version of TikTok, have been making hidden camera-style videos mocking Hong Kongers’ poor command of Mandarin, in the predominantly Cantonese-speaking city.
The city’s tourism minister, Kevin Yeung, has urged residents to be more accommodating, even while calling for stricter oversight of visitors.
“Tourists will make the street crowded, but it is a signal of economic growth,” Mr. Yeung said in a recent television interview. “Hong Kong people have been known to be welcoming. It is the time to show this spirit again.”