Japanese flock to Hong Kong as city boosts ‘kawaii’ appeal with pandas, Labubu

The number of Japanese travellers to Hong Kong jumped more than 32 per cent for the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2024, an encouraging sign of recovery for tourism authorities in the Chinese city seeking to draw more visitors from the Land of the Rising Sun.

Between January and July, 395,375 Japanese travelled to Hong Kong, a healthy 32.2 per cent increase on the same period last year. This figure is still, however, slightly more than 46 per cent down on arrivals in 2018, immediately before the coronavirus pandemic brought tourism around the world to a screeching halt.

The positive figures reflect efforts by the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) to draw more arrivals from a tough market in the face of the weak Japanese yen.

“Japan is a difficult market … A lot of Japanese people are still nervous about travelling abroad and many have not renewed passports that expired during the pandemic. They used to travel abroad but a lot seem to prefer to travel in Japan now and they have got out of the habit of going abroad,” Marii Hayashi, assistant manager for public relations at HKTB’s Tokyo office, told This Week in Asia.

“Also, the yen is very weak against other currencies at the moment, which makes travel overseas expensive, although we are trying to emphasise that it is still much cheaper to fly to Hong Kong than to go to Europe or other long-haul destinations, so we are confident there is still potential to continue to grow.”

Hong Kong is putting on a display contrasting its hyper-modern visuals with the grittiness of its streets at the Tourism Expo Japan 2025 in Nagoya. Visitors have praised the city’s booth as the most eye-catching in the entire show.