A catering industry leader on Monday forecast that local restaurants would see revenues rise by five percent year-on-year during the Lunar New Year holiday.

While many Hong Kong people are likely to travel out of town to enjoy the festivities, incoming tourists are expected to fill in the gap.

In an interview with RTHK, Simon Wong, president of the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades, said the industry had already seen businesses surge over the past few days, especially on Valentine's Day.

He said he believes the industry will rake in HK$900 million during the three-day Lunar New Year holiday, partly boosted by surging tourist numbers.

"There are a lot of Hong Kong people travelling to other places, especially to the Greater Bay Area or Shenzhen area for the Lunar New Year holiday, that would actually affect some of our business," he said.

"However, we see that there are more tourists coming from the mainland, and some tourists coming from other countries, for example, from the Southeast Asian countries and also from the Middle East.

"Those tourists are high-spending groups of people and it would help the catering industry quite a bit," he added, noting that the peak days would be Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Immigration Department earlier estimated there would be almost 11.4 million arrivals and departures during the festive period.

"Although there are so many people going out for gatherings and for dinners in Chinese restaurants, the prices have not gone up and are almost the same as last year's," Wong said.

"Because we are facing competition from many places, especially from the GBA or from Shenzhen, if they increase the prices, they might scare people away."



Edited by Thomas McAlinden