Hong Kong should accommodate more mainland visitors

Hong Kong needs to increase its capacity to welcome tourists as the city faces a plateau in the number of mainland visitors, experts have said.
Hong Kong this year witnessed the first dip in individual mainland visitors in five years during April's Dragon Boat Festival and the May Day holidays, the traditional peak seasons for traveling.
The special administrative region is facing the same problems shared by megacities like Beijing and Shanghai, which cannot sustain further influxes of non-native population, said Guo Wanda, vice president of the Hong Kong and Macao research institute affiliated to the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council.
The number of individual visitors to Hong Kong from the Chinese mainland had been surging before 2013. That year, the total topped 27 million, showing an 18-percent growth year on year.
Hong Hong started to allow mainland residents to travel as individuals in 2003, and the number has reached its maximum capacity in recent years, Guo said.
Mainland visitors accounted for a third of Hong Kong's retail turnover last year, and created more than 100,000 employment opportunities for locals in 2012, according to Guo.
With mainland visitors flooding in, problems have arisen for residents.
"It is too crowded and noisy sometimes because so many people have been coming to Hong Kong these past few years," said Chen Jiaxiang, a Hong Kong local grocery store owner, "though they have boosted my business."
With growing contact between mainlanders and Hong Kong natives, frictions are also on the rise.
In April, a mainland child urinating in a Hong Kong street sparked outrage that spilled into cyberspace.
Some Hong Kong natives have even called for prohibition of visits by mainland people, claiming this is the only way for Hong Kong to maintain its identity.
"Such behavior and mentality will do Hong Kong no good but damage its image," said Cheung Chi-kong, executive director of the Hong Kong-based One Country Two Systems Research Institute.
The region would lose turnover worth 20 million Hong Kong dollars (3.2 million U.S. dollars) if the number of mainland individual visitors dropped by 20 percent, according to Union Bank of Switzerland.
"Hong Kong is like a fish tank," said Guo. "If new fish continue to flow in, the capacity of the tank must be expanded or the fish cannot live harmoniously."
"Hong Kong should consider increasing its land supply and guide visitors to visit different scenic spots instead of the traditional downtown," he added.
The solution lies in Hong Kong's active enhancement of its infrastructure and reception capacities, said Cheung.