HONG KONG: Rude Awakening for Tourism Industry

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

HONG KONG, May 19 1998 (IPS) - Visitors to Hong Kong had often complained about rude shopkeepers and getting surly service, but up until almost a year ago, tourists kept coming in droves anyway, with many of them making return trips.

With its reputation for being a shopping mecca as well as a gourmet heaven, Hong Kong then could well afford to be arrogant, and its people to be downright unfriendly.

By 1996, this then British Crown Colony posted a record tourist arrival number of 11.7 million, and though it was to be handed over to China the next year, Hong Kong was confident its reign as Asia’s premier tourist destination was secure.

But then came the Asian financial meltdown and the now infamous Hong Kong ‘bird flu’. Tourist arrivals have been on a decline as a result.

In 1997, Hong Kong had only 10.3 million visitors, representing a fall in revenue of about 1.5 billion dollars, and there have been no signs of improvement. In the first two months of this year, the number of visitors was down almost a quarter from 1997 figures.

Today, Hong Kong is scrambling to save its multi-billion dollar tourism industry partly with a campaign aimed at encouraging the locals to be more polite and friendly.

The point is to be a ‘Good Host’, according to the Hong Kong Tourist Association (HKTA), so that tourists enjoy their visit enough to come back and perhaps encourage others to do the same.

Bad habits die hard, unfortunately, and the HKTA’s exhortations seem to have made little difference so far. Indeed, visitors still get a rather rude welcome to local ways at the airport itself, where they are engulfed by a frenetic and noisy mob who charge into lifts even before passengers have had time to disembark.

Once outside, tourists who make a mistake of asking a local for directions is likely to either receive a curt reply or be ignored. Those who get bumped accidentally should also not expect even a cursory apology or even a glance.

“We’ve never seen so mannerless a people,” says a German couple who is here for a visit for the first time. “We wondered all the time if they were taught at school the use of words like ‘sorry’ and ‘can I help you’.”

Accommodations are often not enough to make up for all the unfriendliness. Checking in the hotel, visitors discover that even the famed ones offer nothing more than shoebox-sized rooms that are freezer cold. Requests to open the windows on a cool day are met with icy replies bordering on the insulting.

It used to be that Hong Kong offered enough bargains and an array of mouthwatering dishes to make such unpleasantness tolerable. But the devaluation of the currencies of its Asian neighbours, which had provided much of Hong Kong’s visitors, has made its merchandise anything but cheap.

To make matters worse, the series of food-related illnesses that has plagued Hong Kong in the past months has kept even die-hard gourmets away.

Hong Kong is actually blessed with thousands of picturesque bays and jagged peninsulas that can make a visit here worthwhile despite the absence of its traditional tourist come-ons. But a sampan ride in the South China Sea is bound to disappoint despite an amazingly blue sky and a refreshing breeze.

More likely than not, the skipper knows no English and refuses to show anything more than banal Hong Kong island and Kowloon. Says a British tourist who took the ride: “What could be forgiven elsewhere because people would smile and be charming, here you find unforgivable just because Hong Kong people are so indifferent.”

Even the Victoria Peak with its breath-taking view can turn out to be less than relaxing. There, refreshments at the stylish Cafe Deco are served on the condition that one can keep the table only for an hour. Asked the reason for the rule, a caf employee explains sans an apology: “There are too many visitors.”

Hong Kong itself, though, could certainly do with more. The tourist industry slump is already taking a toll on the city’s retail sector, which had relied on visitors for 20 percent of its total sales, and comes at a time when the bigger Chek Lap Kok airport is near ready for operations.

An increasingly worried HKTA is thus pumping an extra six million dollars into its new 14.8 million-dollar campaign, which markets what is now also known as the Chinese special administrative region (SAR) as ‘Hong Kong – City of Life’ to visitors, replacing the ‘Wonders Never Cease’ theme of the handover year.

That the ‘Good Host’ component of the campaign is considered vital by the HKTA is a telling indication that the authorities known all too well where Hong Kong needs to improve if it wants tourists to keep on coming.

Aside from English language instructions for those who so much as provide occasional service to tourists, there will also be service industry training courses, spot checks on retailers and, most importantly, an appeal for the public to be more tourist-friendly.

But it may take some time for a people who have long been used to scowling even among themselves to smile at strangers.