Hong Kong attracted more than 25 million tourists in the first seven months of the year, a 52 per cent year-on-year increase, and the number of visitors from outside mainland China also shot up by 71 per cent.
The Hong Kong Tourism Board on Thursday said it planned to continue spectacular drone shows and fireworks displays to help lure visitors over peak holiday periods as it announced the latest provisional tourism figures.
“On the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the board will present a festival-themed drone show,” the board said.
The traditional Chinese festival, where people celebrate with family gatherings and by eating mooncakes, falls on September 17 this year.
The board added it would stage pyrotechnic displays and a drone show for “Hong Kong WinterFest” in November, as well as a fireworks display for the new year countdown in December.
The special events, which have been held since May, are part of a broad push by tourism authorities to make the city more attractive to visitors, with each costing about HK$1 million (US$128,000) to stage.
The city had more than 3.9 million visitors last month, a 9.3 per cent increase compared to last year, including 3.1 million from the mainland.
More than 25 million visitors travelled to Hong Kong between January and July, a 52 per cent increase on the same period last year.
The seven-month figure included around 19.3 million mainland tourists, up 47.3 per cent year on year.
Non-mainland travellers reached about 5.8 million, a 71.1 per cent increase from the figure recorded between January to July in 2023.
More than half of them – about 3.2 million – came from the city’s short-haul market.
There were 1.6 million visitors from long-haul flights, 362,000 of them from new markets.
The new markets sector covers India, Russia, the Netherlands, Vietnam and six Arab countries.
Figures for January to June showed most visitors came from Taiwan, the Philippines and South Korea under the short-haul market category.
Most long-haul tourists over the same period came from the United States, Australia, Canada and Britain.
