Hong Kong tourists are choosing South Korea and other mainland Chinese cities over Japan for their Christmas holidays, a trade body has said, as around 1,500 outbound tours are expected to depart the city.
Fanny Yeung Shuk-fun, executive director of the Travel Industry Council, said on Wednesday that 60 per cent of Hong Kong’s tour groups would leave via high-speed rail, mostly for short-haul trips lasting three to four days.
“We predict that there will be about 1,500 outbound tours during the Christmas period, which is roughly similar to last year,” she said. “The most popular tours that we see are three- to four-day high-speed rail tours, going to places such as Guilin, Chaoshan and Zhaoqing.”
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For overseas trips, Yeung said that South Korea has emerged as a more popular destination than Japan this Christmas.
“The main reason is that Japan has experienced several incidents in the past one or two months, including bear attacks and earthquakes, which have caused its popularity to drop slightly,” Yeung said.
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Regarding incoming visitors, Yeung said the council expected about 4,000 mainland tour groups to visit Hong Kong in December. Christmas is not an official holiday across the border.