Tourist arrivals up 12.8% to 4.74m in June

Rising number of Mainland visitors offset softening tourism from rest of Asia.

A steady stream of Mainland Chinese tourists continued to boost Hong Kong tourist arrivals to double digit growth after rising 12.8% YoY in June, according to data from the Hong Kong Tourism Board. 

This translates to 4.74 million tourists, with over 3.6 million visitors from the Mainland accounting for three quarters (76.64%) of June tourism levels.

Also read: Embattled Hong Kong hotels brighten up on tourism

The number of visitors from short haul-markets fell 0.2% YoY to 716,728 tourists with the number of visitors from South Korea and Singapore contracting by 13.2% and 12.9% respectively.

The number of visitors from Thailand and Malaysia also fell by 7.2% and 1.5% respectively.

Also read: APAC leads global tourism growth by 8% in Q1

However, the long haul market performed better than the short-haul segment after tourist arrivals inched up 1.1% YoY in June to 322,448 led by the US, Canada, UK and France.

On a half-year basis, tourism levels rose 10.1% to 30.61 million with visitors from the Mainland accounting for the lion’s share of visitor arrivals.