About 840,000 mainland Chinese visitors arrived in Hong Kong over the first three days of this year’s Labour Day holiday, a five-year high for the period.
On Thursday, the second day of the national mini “golden week” holiday, 300,000 people from across the border arrived in the city, the highest number for single-day visits in the past 10 years for the Labour Day break.
In the same three-day period last year, there were about 600,000 mainland visitors.
Acknowledging the tourists could bring disruption as well as benefits to society, Hong Kong’s commerce minister on Saturday asked locals to show “empathy” for their visitors.
On the last day of the four-day holiday, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau Tang-wah said visitor arrival numbers were good in general and consumer spending was similar to last year.
“It would not be true to say there was no influence [on communities],” Yau said on a radio programme, referring to social issues caused by an increasing number of mainland tourists visiting local areas of the city rather than typical attractions.
Mainland tourists have been attracted to different kinds of tourism in Hong Kong in recent years aside from ordinary sightseeing or shopping trips.
Among them are trips for medical tourism in which female mainlanders arrive in the city to get vaccinated against cervical cancer, tourists taking selfies in public housing estates and visitors enjoying tours of local university campuses.
“Such tourism also has its advantages. It can bring more businesses to local shops and present Hong Kong’s distinct features,” Yau said.
Yau stressed the government worked across departments to prepare the city for holiday seasons to welcome visitors from all over the world and minimise negative influences on locals.
He also added that locals should treat visitors with empathy and management of venues open to the public should be improved.
According to Immigration Department figures, in the first three days of the holiday, nearly 840,000 mainlanders arrived in the city.
Tourism sector lawmaker Yiu Si-wing said the number was the best in five years and he expected the figure for all four days would be a 10-year high. He noted that half of the mainlanders did not stay overnight.
This golden week holiday is the first since two major cross-border transport links -- the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link and the 55km Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge -- opened in September and October last year respectively.
Around 120,000 visitors took the express rail to Hong Kong, while nearly 60,000 people passed through the bridge control point over the three days.
Yiu believed the high figure was down to a number of factors including the holiday being one day longer than usual this year and the opening of the two cross-border links.
Another reason for the boost, Yiu said, was that a new system adopted last year allowed more than 7.8 million mainlanders to apply for a visa from their city of residence, rather than from their registered household address, usually their birthplace.
The city’s rail giant, the MTR Corporation, which operates the local section of the express line, released a notice saying all tickets for high-speed trains to the mainland were sold out for Saturday evening. Passengers could consider taking the East Rail line to return to the mainland.