The coming Labour Day Golden Week holiday is expected to see the hotel sector do booming business, a sector representative said on Monday.

Speaking on an RTHK programme, lawmaker Alan Chan who is also the chief operations officer at Miramar Group said that the company’s hotels in Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui were at 95 percent capacity and chalking up an average stay of three days in spite of a rise in room prices by five to eight percent compared to last year.

This reflected a rise in demand, he said, with mainland visitors less sensitive to room prices given that the yuan was appreciating.

Chan pointed out that the unstable situation in the Gulf had not disrupted mainland visitors’ plans to head to Europe, as planes departing from the mainland were transiting through Russian airspace instead of flying through the Middle East.

He noted that many mainland travellers have also decided to head for Hong Kong instead of Japan.

"If you look at flights from the mainland to Japan, you can see they keep shrinking compared to the same period last year," Chan said.

"And because of that, a lot of mainland travellers have chosen to go to South Korea instead – that's their top priority right now.

"Or they're heading to Southeast Asia via Hong Kong. Or coming directly to Hong Kong."

Mega events such as concerts at Kai Tak Sports Park, which opened last year, and the Hong Kong Coliseum have also helped bring in a fair share of tourists, he said.

Chan expects the retail sector to also benefit from the influx of mainland tourists in the upcoming Golden Week holiday, saying that there had been a five-percent rise in hotel occupancies in the first quarter, which also boosted sales at shopping malls nearby.

The Immigration Department estimates the five-day holiday period, which commences on May 1, would bring 980,000 mainland visitors to the SAR – a seven percent growth from a year earlier.


Edited by Aaron Tam