The number of licensed restaurants in Hong Kong has dropped year on year for the first time in six years, a Post analysis has found, with experts attributing the decline partly to locals travelling to mainland China and tourists preferring lighter food options such as street snacks.
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According to data from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, 17,154 restaurant licences were valid as of the end of April, a drop of 255 from the same month last year.
A comparison of licence numbers revealed 2,034 restaurants closed in the past year, while only 1,779 were newly issued.
This marked the first year-on-year drop since the pre-pandemic period, with the number of restaurant licences increasing by an annual rate of 2 to 4 per cent between 2019 and 2022. The growth slowed to about 1 per cent in the following two years.
It was also the tenth consecutive month of year-on-year net decline, a trend that began last July.
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“We attribute this decline partly to the increasing tendency of Hong Kong residents to travel northbound, particularly to Shenzhen,” said Cathie Chung, senior director of research at JLL in Hong Kong.