HK Attracts Korean Tourists
By Sunny Lee
Contributing writer
Hong Kong ― ``Sorry, we are fully booked,'' said a hotel clerk over the phone at the Salisbury YMCA Hotel in Hong Kong. The popular mid-priced hotel has more than 300 guest rooms, but it may not have one for you at this time of the year when Hong Kong becomes a hotly sought-out destination for tourists who descend on this winter haven from all corners of the world, including Korea.
Hong Kong is not necessarily the most ideal budget travel Mecca compared with some other popular destinations such as those in Southeast Asia. The average hotel room rate in Hong Kong, according to the official Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB), was 1,383 Hong Kong dollars ($177) in November. The average room occupancy rate was 93 percent in the same month. During the Christmas and New Year's Day holidays, the figure nears full capacity.
Seoul is notorious for high real estate prices. Hong Kong is worse. Hotel rooms tend to be compact here. Streets are narrow and buildings are densely arranged. But this very feature has brought some unintended convenience to Korean tourists who usually have only two- or three-day holidays at one time in a nation which is so gung-ho about work. The crowded city offers rows of department stores and shopping malls, usually next to each other. As Koreans attach great importance to work efficiency, they surely find efficiency in shopping here as well.
That's what Yim So-youn and Yim Joo-youn did. Hailing from Seoul, the sisters ― an arts major college student and a doctor ― spent most of their daytime shopping and the evenings sightseeing. This formula, shopping by day relaxing by night, works for them. In one evening, they took a tram to Victoria Peak ― Hong Kong's counterpart of Seoul Tower ― where one can overlook the city's famous neon-dotted night skyline.
Tourism has been an important part of Hong Kong's economy particularly since it shifted to a service sector-oriented economy in the late 1980s. In 2006, Hong Kong reeled in a total of 117.3 billion Hong Kong dollars from the tourism industry. Along with strong growth of other Asian economies, Hong Kong has recently seen a burst of tourist activity.
In the single month of November, Hong Kong had 2,448,135 arrivals, the Hong Kong Tourism authority said on December 27. Cumulative arrivals for the January-November period stood at 25.4 million. To a city with just the size of Korea's Incheon, that is an impressive feat.
The HKTB, in particular, points out Korea as one of the two countries that showed ``substantial'' growth. Actually, Koreans were the second largest source of visitors to Hong Kong in November, just behind mainland Chinese tourists, up 26 percent over the same period a year earlier. Korean tourists constantly registered double-digit monthly growth in the six months leading up to November.
The other high-growth country for Hong Kong's tourism industry is the Philippines. Interestingly, South Korea represented the largest number of tourists to visit the Philippines in 2006, surpassing the U.S., with a recorded tourist arrival of 572,133, according to Philippine government data. That is equivalent to 20 percent of the total foreign arrivals in the country.
Overall, Asia remains a popular tourist destination for Koreans, with China and Japan the most popular destinations, capturing 51 percent of the total outbound travelers. In a country with a 47 million population, Koreans traveling abroad for the first time surpassed 10 million in 2005, and the figure is rising. For Hong Kong, ``Korea continued to provide the impetus for growth in the region,'' the HKTB said in a document released last month.