Hong Kong Looks Set To Suffer A Dramatic Drop In Visitors
August 19, 2019A freshly updated report from ForwardKeys, which analyses over 17 million flight bookings a day, has revealed that the recent wave of pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, culminating in the closure of the airport on Monday, has had the effect of deterring people from making plans to visit the city.
In the almost eight-week period from 16th June – 9th August, which has been marked by a two million strong demonstration accompanied by a general strike and riots on 16th June, the siege of police headquarters, the storming of the Legislative Council building on 1st July and, more recently, riot police charging protesters with batons and firing tear gas, numerous arrests, warnings from several countries about travel to Hong Kong and mass protests at the airport, flight bookings to Hong Kong from Asian markets* have fallen by 20.2% on the equivalent period last year.
In the first fortnight (16th – 29th June), bookings fell 9.0% and in the second (30th June – 13th July), 2.2%. At that point, it appeared that the demonstrations were having a short-term impact on short-haul travel. However, in the following 27 days (14th July – 9th August), there has been a dramatic drop in bookings – 33.4%. There is now clear evidence that the protests have reversed a positive travel trend in which bookings for the first six and a half months of the year were up 6.6% on 2018.