One Friday was late summer and the sun was shining in the sky: conditions were perfect for Disneyland to have fun. In this situation and in this park, the subject should not be a needle. But if you were recently visiting the “Magical Realm” park in Hong Kong, you would find that its queues are empty and its streets lonely;
The queues for the park playground, which you would normally have to wait for half an hour, were very short: if there was a queue. The capacity of the equipment was also not filled at all: most cups of Madder Tycaps (crazy salesman’s cups) were running around with no music on and off. At lunch time, visitors would choose from among the empty tables of the restaurant. It was a sad scene, and it was almost the whole summer, because our Disneyland park had been the victim of Hong Kong protests.
Demonstrations in favor of democracy have been raging in Hong Kong since June, with a severe blow to Hong Kong’s economy. Hong Kong City Finance Officer Paul Chan wrote in an Internet post June 8 that the tourism, commodity distribution and hotels industries are “suffering” from this situation.
Mr Chan said in his online comments that tourist arrivals to the city in July were down by only 5% compared to last year, but declined sharply by 40% in August.
Chan says hotels also suffer from this: the ratio of rented to empty rooms in some hotels is halved and average hotel rentals fall by 40-70%. Hong Kong International Airport also saw a 12.4 percent decline in passenger shipments in August this year compared to August last year.
The downward trend in the number of tourists in the city was well and clearly seen throughout Disneyland.
At the peak of summer when students are on holiday and families are traveling, the low number of tourists was noticeable. This summer was not at all normal; the city was experiencing major demonstrations for the 16th consecutive week, and warming had reached the happiest city in the world. When the riots broke out in June and June, the world’s top news agencies released images of the disruption to the world: tear gas, fire and firing, and flogging a man’s waist.
The protesters themselves deliberately did their job to reach the world. Together, they raised some money to print full-page images in the world’s largest newspapers, with thousands gathering at the airport and holding signs to clearly see travelers entering the city.
These messages and images do not seem to be in vain: Dozens of countries have warned their people to travel to Hong Kong, and travelers are now leaving the city.
“This summer the number of visitors has been very low overall, even on holidays where people have to go to the park more often,” said one Disney Park employee who did not want to be named. But the decline in the number of non-Hong Kong tourists in the park was even greater than the number of visitors. ”
“At present, the number of visitors to the park is not” normal “at all,” he added.
According to the airport agency, most of the decline in the number of passengers arriving to Hong Kong was due to the mainland (or Republic) of China, Southeast Asia and Taiwan. The decline in the number of visitors to the (Communist) Republic of China is no surprise, since there is a strong tendency among the protest movement against China to take a stronger stance than Beijing.
The most secluded Disneyland in the world
However, the harsh winds from the tensions in Hong Kong, China, drive Disneyland and its tourism industry. According to the Chinese government, tourists coming from mainland China make up 76% of its annual visitors.
A Disneyland employee we mentioned earlier said some tourists are still coming from Japan, Korea and other neighboring countries, but the decline in Chinese tourists has been really sharp. He says the number of tourists declined the most in August, confirming the tourism statistics Mr Chan said in his blog post.
