The tourists’ arrivals in Hong Kong dived nearly 99 percent to another new low of 82,000 in March, official year-on-year figures revealed on Wednesday, as the coronavirus or COVID 19 pandemic forced the city’s travel and tourism industry to a near standstill.
It is according to the latest statistics of Hong Kong Tourism Board, it is seen that only 3.49 million visitors came to the city in the first quarter this year, down 80.9 percent from the same period last year.
The Hong Kong Tourism Board is working on a series of initiatives to prepare for the recovery of Hong Kong’s tourism industry.
Since the coronavirus or COVID-19 hit Hong Kong in January, the government has rolled out a series of travel curbs to contain the spread of the disease, closing all but three border checkpoints. In March, officials further tightened travel restrictions, requiring all people coming to Hong Kong from overseas to go into mandatory quarantine. That included the city’s residents.
The board said before mid-March, the average daily arrivals were between 3,000 and 4,000. But after officials required non-residents entering the city from March 19 onwards to be quarantined, the figure dropped to about 1,000.
From March 25, all non-Hong Kong residents coming from abroad by air have been denied entry to the city. That rule has also applied to those from mainland China, Macau and Taiwan if they had been to any other countries in the past two weeks.
With such a measure in place, the Hong Kong Tourism Board said the number of arrivals of international and domestic tourists plunged to just 300 per day, while the average daily visitors dropped to below 100 at the beginning of April.
The previous record fall was in February when the city posted a 96.4 percent year-on-year slump to 199,000 – around the daily average in the first half of last year.
