The impact of Mainland Chinese Tourists on Hong Kong
25 years + of mass tourism has changed Hong Kong Culture
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Me Jamie, your host, I am English and I have lived in Hong Kong since January 2nd 1972 - I know the place.
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© Copyright Acknowledged | All rights reserved.| Image found by Bill
A fake AI image of the Star Ferry | Mainland Chinese Tourists | Hong Kong
My great friend Bill sent me this image, it is a fake (but looks real to someone who does not know Hong Kong) but it tells a story about the pitfalls of overtourism
Basically whoever created this image is taking at pop at Mainland Chinese Tourists who represent almost 80% of our visitors for the past 15 years, lovely people and Hong Kong welcomes people from all over the world but social media has meant that icons such as the Star Ferry in Hong Kong is swamped with tourists wanting to take a selfie
For the record, there is only 2 decks on the Star Ferry not 3 and with that many people, the ferry would capsize and sink, not good optics
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© Copyright Acknowledged | All rights reserved.| Image taken by Jamie
A typical scene on Hong Kong Streets | Mainland Chinese Tour Group | Hong Kong
Jamie, I have lived in Hong Kong since 1972 and pioneered Private Tours of Hong Kong after starting by handing out leaflets at the Peak Tram and Star Ferry in Hong Kong in 2010.
Here are some very recent headlines in January 2026
“As diplomatic row drags on, how is Japan coping with a fall in Chinese tourists?”
“The Japanese public welcomes a Chinese tourist drought … but what about businesses?”
“Chinese tourists picking South Korea over Japan for Lunar New Year amid visa ease”
This is a scenario that is unlikely to affect Hong Kong but it absolutely highlights the folly of relying on a business model where 80% of your tourists come from one location. This was a lesson I learnt back in 1978 and it is still relevant.
In a nutshell the Japanese Government made some comments on a politically sensitive subject with regards to China in November 2025 and the Chinese Governments response was to tell it’s citizens NOT to go to Japan and tourism numbers from China have been in free fall ever since, with no sign of it improving in the short term.
Welcome to geopolitics in 2026
I should also point out that Mainland Chinese citizens are very proud of China but they have yet to develop thick skins and they react very badly to any sort of criticism even if that comes from Hong Kong residents, for example if a restaurant provides bad service or poor food within a few minutes it will be all over Chinese Social Media and the restaurant will lose it’s client base overnight.
The situation in Japan was along the lines of a “travel advisory” being issued by the Chinese Government which said that visiting Japan was not safe and it is estimated that arrivals in February 2026 will be down 60+ % from February 2025
Thailand is having a similar problem, this one was because a famous Chinese actor was kidnapped which has led to a devastating wave of flight and hotel cancellations
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The astonishing numbers of Mainland Chinese Visitors coming to Hong Kong from 2000 - 2025
These are the numbers of Mainland Chinese tourists coming to Hong Kong since the year 2000, these are official Hong Kong Government statistics
The first big jump was in 2003 when Hong Kong was hit by SARS and we had a mini pandemic situation, the Hong Kong Government asked the Mainland Chinese Government to allow more tourists from China to visit to Hong Kong and as the saying goes, “the rest is history”
In the past 11 years the % of Mainland Chinese Tourists coming to Hong Kong has been almost 80% of our total tourist arrivals and sometimes I wonder if anyone in the Hong Kong Government has been to business school, I also wonder about those business giants in tourism (particularly hotels and retail) have even been to business school, it is absolute folly to have 80% of your customers coming from one place, a crash is inevitable.
The crash was a by product of Covid when our border was closed to pretty much everyone for almost 3 years.
Yes, the Mainland Chinese tourists have come back (and yes, again roughly 80% of our total tourists) but something changed
Pre Covid the Mainland Chinese Tourists where all about shopping, everything in Hong Kong particularly luxury brand name products was a lot cheaper than China because of taxes and such so many retailers (cosmetics, luxury watches, jewellery) expanded and added new shops in all the major shopping districts at eye watering rents and for quite a few years all was well in the world, then Covid and we now have the bizarre situation of Mainland Chinese Tourists becoming thrifty and are no longer buying luxury goods in vast quantities and opt to stay in budget hotels and in fact many of them are now what you would call day trippers (due to vastly improved high speed rail links and less red tape)
Day trippers are budget travellers.
... and if you think that is odd, recently there has been an upsurge in Mainland Chinese Tourists buying luxury goods again and lines waiting to get into these stores are now returning
In other words it is a volatile situation particularly when you have another bizarre situation of Hong Kong residents travelling across the border with China to eat in restaurants which are so much cheaper than Hong Kong, this habit is particularly bad at weekends and it is not just cheap food, it is cheap everything (except for expensive luxury products}
This means that we have a situation where many restaurants in Hong Kong going out of business (including some famous chains) because Hong Kong residents are eating in China and the frugal Mainland Chinese tourists find the food here to be too expensive!
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© Copyright Acknowledged | All rights reserved.| Image taken by Jamie
A typical scene at Victoria Peak | Mainland Chinese Tourists | Hong Kong
This is a snapshot of one particular moment in time which shows the impact of Mainland Chinese Tourists at Victoria Peak in Hong Kong, this is not a one off event, we get scenes like this quite often, mid afternoon, Victoria Peak gets anywhere from 7 - 10 million + visitors a year and is our most popular attraction
I quite like Mainland Chinese Tourists, they are happy people and clearly love to come to Hong Kong, when I am out and about I quite often end up in group photographs with them (and I do not speak Mandarin or Cantonese)
However they do have a major affect on sites and sights purely because of the sheer volume of people coming here and all the popular places (Disneyland, Victoria Peak, The Big Buddha, Avenue of the Stars, The Star Ferry etc) are jammed with them 7 days a week, which can be very frustrating, recently on a couple of Sundays I had to abort plans to travel on the Star Ferry because the lines where so long, it would have been a 30 - 60 minute wait.
One of my favourite sayings is “the genie is well and truly out of the bottle” and that happened in 2003, the reason back then was understandable giving that tourism is very important in relation to the Hong Kong Economy and the Tourism Board to me gives the impression that all they care about is beating last years visitor numbers and they are hardly alone in that way of thinking,
I have seen some reports that the aim is to breach the holy grail which is 100 million visitors a year which is double the 2025 figure and with the population of China at 1.4 billion who would bet against that?
Hong Kong is a rather unique city, the whole east meets west thing goes on here but geopolitics in the past few years is causing havoc in Asia for tourism and unfortunately Hong Kong is caught in the middle, in a nutshell, any tourism policies in place in Hong Kong could be cancelled with a single message from Beijing and it could be implemented overnight.
We are far too reliant of one source of tourists.
The 3 Best Food Tour Companies in Hong Kong
Below please find links to the 3 best food tour companies in Hong Kong | They are my great friends and I have worked closely with all three of them for well over a decade - I highly recommend them
Please note that I do not, nor have I ever done food tours in Hong Kong, best left to the experts, all of them have a top notch team of guides, all there of them do private tours and group tours and none of them will fill your head with pretentious waffle
A special mention to Amy of Hong Kong Greeters who also does a specific Vegetarian Food Tour which is very popular.
© Jamie Lloyd | J3 Consultants Hong Kong | J3 Private Tours Hong Kong |
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