April is not the time of year for a quiet cup of tea in most five-star hotel lobby lounges across the Pearl River Delta. This is the month when buyers from all over the world arrive in droves for the country's biggest annual trade shows.
They will meet their suppliers mostly at convention and exhibition centres in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Guangzhou, but the real negotiating often takes place at the hotels. If they end up signing multimillion-dollar orders for widgets or shoes before they leave, then the temporary inconvenience here will probably be well worth it.
Viewpoints on this are starting to depend increasingly, of course, on where 'here' is. Hong Kong is still the most popular place in the region to attend international conventions and exhibitions. It is hard to get exact figures, but tourism officials believe that as many as 3 million visitors come to the city annually for that purpose.
The opening of the AsiaWorld-Expo near the airport provides yet another world-class venue, and ought to bring in many more visitors each year for such high-profile events as the Asian Aerospace expo, which it has snatched away from Singapore.
It is hard, however, to have much confidence in Hong Kong's longer-term future as a hub for trade-related events. There are no figures available for how many visitors attend trade fairs in Guangdong. Yet there is much anecdotal evidence to suggest that Hong Kong is gradually pricing itself out of the market for attracting international visitors to trade-related events.
As usual, reasons for this begin with the property market: it has become too expensive to invest in new hotels. Room rates have grown exponentially higher than those within an hour's drive across the border. Restaurant prices are also shooting up in tandem with extortionate rent rises over the past year, while bars and karaoke parlours are expensive enough to make disbelievers of expense-claim administrators at head office.