Time to showcase the real Hong Kong to draw tourists back

With the “Hello Hong Kong” campaign failing to lift off and tourism numbers sagging, the search is continuing for answers. Blaming the Covid-19 pandemic has been a regular feature of this exercise, but it does not explain why cities such as Bangkok, Tokyo and Macau – all emerging from their own pandemic woes – are packed with visitors.

Copying the approach of other destinations would be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but that is a common bureaucratic response when ideas are scarce. Every place has its own unique character, and this is what excites visitors. No one visits Japan expecting sumo wrestlers to perform Swan Lake, entertaining as that would be.

Hong Kong still retains key attributes that drove inbound visitor numbers to 65 million in 2018, so why the plunge? The unrest of the intervening years certainly animated some people and depressed others, but visitors to the city have always enjoyed its unique mix of Western cosmopolitanism and Cantonese tradition with unrivalled street spectacle. Canned celebrity ads simply do not get this message across.