Local gov'ts urged to ease visa policies
The number of mainland tourists visiting Hong Kong and Taiwan saw a decline during the three-day May Day holidays this year, and experts noted Monday that the tourism market in the two regions has reached a certain stage and may remain sluggish in the future.
During the holidays, which ran from Saturday to Monday, Hong Kong continued to see a decline in visits from mainland travelers, media reports said.
In previous years, retailers in Hong Kong would see an increase of at least 20 percent in their business during the May Day holidays, but not this year, Hong Kong news portal hkcna.hk said Sunday.
And the catering business in Hong Kong will report a loss of more than 10 percent during the holidays on a yearly basis, according to the report.
"I did not see long queues outside stores when I visited Causeway Bay, which is quite different from the past," said a 30-something white-collar worker surnamed Song who lives in Zhuhai, South China's Guangdong Province. Zhuhai is 190 kilometers away from Hong Kong.
Song told the Global Times Monday that "the shopping centers that used to be crowded seemed less popular, as the number of mainland visitors has kept falling in recent years."
Meanwhile, the number of visitors from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan reached 11,000 during the three-day holidays, down 21.4 percent year-on-year, hkcna.hk said Sunday, citing industry data.
Mainland tourists were eager to go to Hong Kong for shopping in the past, but shopping channels have become more diversified and it is now easier for Chinese customers to buy what they want via cross-border e-commerce platforms, said Jiang Yiyi, director of international tourism development at the Beijing-based China Tourism Academy.
"Hong Kong's reputation as a 'shopping paradise' now faces challenges," Jiang said, noting that it is becoming less attractive to mainland visitors.
The development of the tourism markets in Hong Kong and Taiwan has entered a period when growth in mainland visitors has halted, Jiang told the Global Times Monday.
Other destinations popular
However, mainland tourists are still showing increasing demand for outbound travel.
During the holidays, South Korea, Thailand and Japan were the top three travel destinations for Chinese tourists, followed by Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as Singapore and Indonesia, thepaper.cn said Sunday, citing a report by China's leading online travel agent Ctrip.
By April 25, travel products for Japan, South Korea and Thailand during the holidays were already sold out despite having prices 10 percent higher than normal times, the report said.
The local government in Seoul, capital of South Korea, set May 1 as a "Chinese tourists Day" in a bid to attract more Chinese visitors during the May Day holidays, the Xinhua News Agency said Thursday. Special treatment was organized for Chinese tourists, such as offering gifts and allowing them to try on ethnic clothing, noted the report.
"I wanted to travel to South Korea during this short holidays because it takes only a few hours by air to get there," a 20-something white-collar worker surnamed Lin from Beijing told the Global Times Monday.
"The food is good, the scenery is lovely and the prices of some goods are low," Lin said.
Foreign countries and regions are trying hard to attract Chinese visitors, experts noted. "For instance, Japan has rolled out more open policies to offer Chinese visitors easier access to the country," Jiang said.
However, Hong Kong and Taiwan have tightened their visa polices for mainland visitors, exerting a negative impact on the growth of mainland travelers, Jiang noted.
"The tourism markets in Hong Kong and Taiwan will continue to see sluggish demand among mainland visitors if no specialized polices are issued," Li Mingde, chairman of the supervisory board of the Beijing Tourism Society, told the Global Times on Monday.
Jiang agreed with Li, saying that the Hong Kong and Taiwan tourism markets could see a rise in mainland visitors in the future if their local governments loosen visa policies.
