Hong Kong’s inaugural Portuguese culture festival is expected to attract more than 6,000 people, including tourists from around the region, but finding a venue for the event had proved to be a big hurdle, organisers have said.
The city will host its first Sardine Festival from Thursday until September 1 at AIA Vitality Park along Central’s harbourfront, offering Portuguese classics such as grilled sardines, piri piri chicken, egg custard tarts, meat sandwiches and caldo verde – a traditional soup of vegetables and sausages.
The event will also offer a selection of the country’s most popular wines and feature performances by Portuguese artists and DJs.
But organisers have said they experienced challenges getting the festival off the ground.
Cristina Salavarria, marketing manager for Lemon Three Sports and Entertainment Management, the company behind the event, said the city lacked sufficient venues for festivals and lengthy bureaucratic procedures had proved to be a major hurdle.
She noted that facilities had to be booked a year in advance and it took weeks for the government to respond to inquiries.
“For example, if you want to hold a concert, you have to submit dates, and you get three options each time,” she said. “After four to six weeks, you get an answer saying ‘no, it’s fully booked’, so you have to keep repeating the process again and again.”
Hugo Monteiro, the event’s project manager, said government departments needed to be more coordinated and consistent, as organisers had to work closely with authorities to obtain various licenses for large events.
Salavarria praised certain organisations such as the Hong Kong Tourism Board as “the best”, saying it had responded enthusiastically to the event and offered guidance and help with publicity.
Yet one agency’s support could be hamstrung by another’s pushback, she added.
“The Tourism Board wants one thing, but another department wants another thing. So they are not together,” she said. “It’s very difficult to deal with some people inside the government.”
The organisers said they had been preparing for the four-day event since November of last year, with the festival prompted by an increased “appreciation that Hong Kong people had for Portuguese culture”.
“Portugal has become a very trendy country … there has been a switch from going to France or other countries,” Monteiro said.
Salavarria also touched on Hong Kong’s interest in Portuguese culture, saying: “Locals may have learned some of [the culture] from eating out in Macau, but even here in Hong Kong, we also have a very close-knit Portuguese community, so we started from that.”
She said the organisers hoped the festival could become an annual event that lasted a month similar to “Le French May”, the arts and cultural festival that runs from May to June every year in Hong Kong.
Monteiro said ticket sales suggested the inaugural event would garner at least 6,000 visitors, with about 10 per cent coming from places such as Japan, South Korea, mainland China and Malaysia.
Tickets for adults are HK$80 (US$10) for a single-day entry, while four-day VIP passes cost HK$250. Day tickets for children and elderly residents are priced at HK$50.
