Coronavirus: Hong Kong taking ‘bigger hit’ than during Sars as tourism sector suffers from ‘unprecedented downturn’
- Deadly outbreak has devastated city’s tourism industry, reducing number of daily arrivals to an average of 3,000
- Tourism board plans to begin rebuilding confidence in Hong Kong from May with a big push for the fourth quarter of 2020
The unfolding and deadly coronavirus outbreak is going to cause a bigger hit on Hong Kong’s tourism sector than the Sars epidemic in 2003 and will extract a heavy toll on the year’s overall visitor numbers, the industry’s promotion body has said.
Dane Cheng Ting-yat, executive director of the government-backed Hong Kong Tourism Board, on Tuesday said it would further downgrade its January estimate of 50 million tourist arrivals to the city in 2020 – itself a 10 per cent decline year on year.
The daily average was only a third of the same figure during the lowest point of the severe acute respiratory syndrome, when an average of 10,000 people came to the city in May 2003.
“It will be a bigger hit than Sars,” Cheng said. “The existing decline is unimaginable.”