Hong Kong visitors top 11 million

Leisure travelers boosted Hong Kong’s visitor numbers by 15.6% in the first quarter.

The Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) said visitor arrivals exceeded 11.2 million, or a year-on-year increase of 15.6%. Of these, about half (5.56 million) were overnight arrivals. This total was 8.6% more than the same period in 2011.

“Notwithstanding the volatile global economic environment, we recorded across-the-board increase in Mainland, short-haul and long-haul arrivals during the first quarter of this year,” said HKTB Chairman James Tien.

“The number of overnight arrivals also went up by 8.6%, with 10% increase for Mainland China and even 20%increase for South Korea and the Philippines, the majority of whom belonged to overnight vacation arrivals, fully underlying Hong Kong’s appeal as a leading leisure destination in Asia.

“Looking ahead, we expect the growth momentum to sustain into the second quarter of the year. The HKTB is already gearing up for an exciting series of programmes this summer to draw even more visitors to Hong Kong.”

Visitor arrivals from Mainland China rose 21% to 7,895,453. Arrivals accounted for 44% or 3.46 million of this number, 10.4% more than the same period last year.

Outside the Mainland, the best-performing region is North Asia, whose cumulative arrivals rose 10.6% to nearly 650,000. Overall arrivals from South Korea increased 17.2% to exceed 300,000.

Overall arrivals from Japan went up by 5.3% to 340,000, bringing the market’s performance back to the pre-Fukushima levels.

For Southeast Asia, expanded flight capacity between Hong Kong and the region brought overall arrivals up by 6.6% to 711,004. Overnight arrivals, 70% of which were vacation arrivals, went up by 5.6% to about 530,000.

Among the individual markets, the Philippines achieved the best performance, with its total arrivals and overnight arrivals up by 17.9% and by more than 20%, respectively.

In long-haul markets, overall arrivals from Europe gained by 9.4% to 483,363 despite the impact of the sovereign debt crisis. Overnight arrivals from the region also grew by 9.5. For the new market of Russia, overall arrivals surged by 72.3% to reach 50,961, making the country the fourth biggest European market just after the UK, Germany and France.