According to a recent study, has revealed that the number of mainland Chinese visitors coming to Hong Kong by air has dropped by 53.3% from 1st July until 23rd September. Even the forward scheduled bookings are lagging behind to 58.2% from 24th September until 30th December from last year’s booking. The initiation of the protest saw a little setback, initially which was due to the extradition bill, which began on 31st March. Now the impact is seen to have impacted immensely on the travel statistics to Hong Kong from mainland China as the turning point came in mid-July. With the shut down of Hong Kong’s airport, the flight bookings to China fell dramatically by mid of August.

At the time of production of the report which is basically from ForwardKeys’ in the third week of September, weekly bookings were more than 40% down on the equivalent week as compared to that of 2018. This clearly states that the bookings are failing exceedingly where cancellations happen to be more than new bookings.

The National Day Golden Week which is scheduled from (1st – 7th October), is traditionally a period when every year Chinese visitors flood to Hong Kong. This year also went plain with more canceled tickets than that of booked ones. The same scenario appears for the Hong Kong Winter Festival and Christmas sales season scheduled from 29th November – 31st December, for which forward bookings are currently lagging behind by  68.7%.

Jameson Wong, APAC Business Development Director for  ForwardKeys, said: “Hong Kong is one of the world’s great cities. In addition to being the financial capital of Asia, it is a wonderful place to visit, with attractions like Hong Kong Disneyland, Big Buddha, Victoria Peak, and the Star Ferry. It is also a fantastic shopping destination, with everything from iconic street markets to high-end retail. So, when one considers that mainland China is Hong Kong’s most important source market and the tourism industry is responsible for 300,000 jobs in Hong Kong, these numbers reveal that the demonstrations are delivering a devastating blow to the economy of the Special Administrative Region.”