Tourism representatives on Saturday (Jan. 3) said hotels performed well during the Christmas and New Year holiday period, and that tourist numbers had hit 250,000 on the first day of 2026.
Speaking on a radio programme, Timothy Chui, executive director of the Hong Kong Tourism Association, said hotel occupancy rates had been satisfactory throughout the holidays despite room rates rising 10 to 15 percent during the peak festive season.
"Taking January 1 this year as an example, if we treat that day as part of 2025 figures, it is the largest number of guests we received throughout the year, as we have 210,000 mainland and another 40,000 international visitors. And we still need to take into account those who were already staying on December 31," he said.
"We have around 90,000 hotel rooms in the city. If two guests occupy one room for the night, we will have received 180,000 overnight guests. International guests have to stay the night, and on average, they stay for three nights."
Lawmaker Perry Yiu, who is also chairman of China Travel Services (Hong Kong), said the increase was due to the SAR's festive atmosphere and various events scheduled for January 1.
"Looking at the whole of December, we have the highest number of tourists compared to other months in the rest of 2025," he said.
"Their numbers hit nearly 1.3 million, which is the highest we've had since Covid-19."
Yiu said the city was now seeing a diverse range of tourist groups, including families, young travellers, and business travellers.
The two tourism representatives also expect businesses to fare well during the upcoming Lunar New Year holidays in February. They said the government should flag events as soon as possible so the industry could make preparations and begin promotional work.
(Source: RTHK)
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