The effects of SARS on the Hong Kong tourism industry: An empirical evaluation

The objective of this study is to assess the temporal impact of SARS on the tourists' arrival in Hong Kong. An econometric strategy was carefully selected to determine the existence of unit roots in data series containing the number of tourist arrivals from 36 source countries between 1978 and 2001. The existence of unit roots can detect the stationary properties of the series. The analysis finds that data series of 24 countries contain unit roots and hence any form of exogenous shocks, like the SARS epidemic, can have permanent impact on the number of tourist arrivals. Included in this category are Japan, Taiwan, the US and the UK, which are the main source of tourists for Hong Kong. The paper recommends that authorities take source-country-specific measures to manage the negative effect of SARS.     

Global Financial/Economic Crisis and Tourist Arrival Forecasts for Hong Kong

This paper examines the impact of the global financial/economic crisis on the demand for Hong Kong tourism by residents of 10 major source markets for the period 2009–2012. To capture the influence of this crisis, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ADLM) is used to calculate the demand elasticities, and four scenarios (ranging from the most pessimistic to the most optimistic) are created to examine the possible impacts of changes in source market income levels and the price of tourism on the demand for Hong Kong tourism in these markets. The demand elasticities reveal that the economic conditions in the source markets are the most significant determinants of demand for Hong Kong tourism. In the most pessimistic scenario, total tourist arrivals to Hong Kong are projected to reach 27.6 million in 2009 and 26.0 million in 2012, whereas in the most optimistic scenario, these numbers are 30.7 million in 2009 and 33 million in 2012. In all of the scenarios, tourist arrivals from the long-haul markets are expected to suffer more losses relative to the short-haul markets during the 2009–2012 forecasting period. The forecasts also indicate that the market shares of the source markets will change slightly over this period, with Mainland China, Taiwan and Japan constituting the dominant markets for Hong Kong tourism.     

Modelling and forecasting the demand for Hong Kong tourism

The main objectives of this paper are to identify the factors which contribute to the demand for Hong Kong tourism with the aid of econometric models and to generate forecasts of international tourism arrivals to Hong Kong for the period 2001–2008. The general-to-specific modelling approach is followed to model and forecast the demand for Hong Kong tourism by residents from the 16 major origin countries/regions and the empirical results reveal that the most important factors that determine the demand for Hong Kong tourism are the costs of tourism in Hong Kong, the economic condition (measured by the income level) in the origin countries/regions, the costs of tourism in the competing destinations and the ‘word of mouth’ effect. The demand elasticities and forecasts of tourism arrivals obtained from the demand models form the basis of policy formulations for the tourism industry in Hong Kong.     

Modeling Tourism Demand

SUMMARY

Most of the existing studies on tourism demand forecasting apply economic models that use mathematical functions, which require many statistical assumptions and limitations. This paper presents a new approach that applies the rough sets theory to form a forecasting model for tourism demand. The objective of this research is to create patterns which are able to distinguish between the classes of arrivals in terms of volume, based upon differences in the characteristics in each arrival. The information about the arrivals was organized in an Information Table where the number of arrivals corresponds to condition attributes, and the classification was defined by a decision attribute that indicated the forecast categorical value of future arrivals. Utilizing Japanese arrivals data in Hong Kong, empirical results showed the induced decision rules could accurately forecast (86.5%) of the test data.     

Can multi-source heterogeneous data improve the forecasting performance of tourist arrivals amid COVID-19? Mixed-data sampling approach

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has already caused enormous damage to the global economy and various industries worldwide, especially the tourism industry. In the post-pandemic era, accurate tourism demand recovery forecasting is a vital requirement for a thriving tourism industry. Therefore, this study mainly focuses on forecasting tourist arrivals from mainland China to Hong Kong. A new direction in tourism demand recovery forecasting employs multi-source heterogeneous data comprising economy-related variables, search query data, and online news data to motivate the tourism destination forecasting system. The experimental results confirm that incorporating multi-source heterogeneous data can substantially strengthen the forecasting accuracy. Specifically, mixed data sampling (MIDAS) models with different data frequencies outperformed the benchmark models.     

How do Mainland Chinese travelers choose restaurants in Hong Kong?: An exploratory study of individual visit scheme travelers and packaged travelers

The introduction of the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS), which allows Mainland Chinese travelers (hereafter called Chinese travelers) to visit Hong Kong on an individual basis, has been beneficial to the fast recovery of the local economy in Hong Kong from severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The IVS travelers, together with the packaged travelers who visited Hong Kong by joining packaged tours, are presently forming the largest segment of inbound travelers to Hong Kong. Despite the significant economic contributions of Chinese travelers to Hong Kong in general, and to the foodservice sector in particular, there has been an absence of prior studies on IVS travelers’ behavior of selecting restaurants in the existing hospitality and tourism literature. This paper reports on an exploratory study that investigated the perceived importance of attributes that pertain to the selection of restaurants from the perspective of IVS and packaged travelers from Mainland China. Empirical findings of a questionnaire survey with 230 Chinese travelers, including 127 IVS travelers and 103 packaged travelers, showed that the respondents in general viewed the included attributes as relatively important. In addition, only two attributes exhibited significant differences between IVS and packaged travelers. Findings of this research would be useful for hospitality and tourism practitioners to better prepare for receiving the growing number of Chinese travelers.     

Forecasting tourism demand with ARMA-based methods

The forecast of tourism volume in the form of arrivals is of special importance for tourism and other hospitality industries because it is an indicator of future demand, thereby providing basic information for subsequent planning and policy making. In this paper, three univariate ARMA-based models are applied to tourism demand, as represented by the number of world-wide visitors to Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand. The study employs both monthly and quarterly time series generated from nine principal tourist destinations in Asian-Pacific region in the forecasting exercise to ensure the reliability of the forecasting evaluation. Forecasting performance based on disaggregated arrival series in a particular destination is examined as well. The general impression is that the ARMA-based models perform very well and in some cases the magnitude of mean absolute percentage error is lower than 2% level.     

香港赴澳门游客特征研究——与内地游客比较

本研究通过在澳门返回香港的轮船上以随机抽样调查的方式调查了香港到澳门旅游的游客348人.通过SPSS软件分析,揭示了香港赴澳游客的基本特征、行为模式和对澳门旅游设施的满意度.通过对比到澳门旅游的内地自由行游客和团客,本研究发现,香港游客同内地自由行游客的消费模式比较接近,同团客差距较大.本研究对预测内地游客未来的消费模式有较大的意义.     

Forecasting tourism recovery amid COVID-19

The profound impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on global tourism activity has rendered forecasts of tourism demand obsolete. Accordingly, scholars have begun to seek the best methods to predict the recovery of tourism from the devastating effects of COVID-19. In this study, econometric and judgmental methods were combined to forecast the possible paths to tourism recovery in Hong Kong. The autoregressive distributed lag-error correction model was used to generate baseline forecasts, and Delphi adjustments based on different recovery scenarios were performed to reflect different levels of severity in terms of the pandemic's influence. These forecasts were also used to evaluate the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry in Hong Kong.     

A Seasonal ARIMA Model of Tourism Forecasting: The Case of Taiwan

This paper aims to determine suitable SARIMA models to forecast the monthly outbound tourism departures of three major destinations from Taiwan to Hong Kong, Japan and the USA, respectively. The HEGY test is used to identify the deterministic seasonality in the data. The mean absolute per cent error (MAPE) is used to measure forecast accuracy. A low MAPE demonstrates the adequacy of the fitted SARIMA models. The results indicate that all series with first non-seasonal difference are needed to obtain the deterministic trend in outbound tourism series in Taiwan.     

Tourism demand forecasting with online news data mining

This study empirically tests the role of news discourse in forecasting tourist arrivals by examining Hong Kong. It employs structural topic modeling to identify key topics and their meanings related to tourism demand. The impact of the extracted news topics on tourist arrivals is then examined to forecast tourism demand using the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average with the selected news topic variables method. This study confirms that including news data significantly improves forecasting performance. Our forecasting model using news topics also outperformed the others when the destination was experiencing social unrest at the local level. These findings contribute to tourism demand forecasting research by incorporating discourse analysis and can help tourism destinations address various externalities related to news media.     

The impact of the Asian financial crisis on Japanese demand for travel to Hong Kong: A study of various forecasting techniques

The Asian financial crisis has drawn worldwide attention because of its significant economic impact on local economics, especially on the economy of a tourism‐dependent destination. Unfortunately, there have been very few articles about the relationship of the Asian financial crisis and tourism demand forecasting. This relative lack of prior studies on the Asian financial crisis and tourism demand forecasting is particularly true in the context of Hong Kong. This article reports on a study that utilized officially published data to test the accuracy of forecasts of Japanese demand for travel to Hong Kong, measured in terms of the number of Japanese tourist arrivals. Seven commonly‐used tourism forecasting techniques were used to determine the forecasting accuracy. The quality of forecasting accuracy was measured in five dimensions. Experimental results indicated mixed results in terms of forecasting accuracy. Overall, artificial neural network outperformed other techniques in three of the five dimensions.     

Crisis Management During the SARS Threat

ABSTRACT

No one could have predicted the outbreak of SARS and its impact on the tourism business. Within a fortnight, hotel occupancy dropped by more than 80% to a single digit record. The hotel industry in Hong Kong was largely caught unprepared, and had to quickly work out ways in which to mitigate the loss of business and profit. This paper identifies the impact of SARS on hotels in Hong Kong, and the relevant human resources strategies used to tackle the crisis. The findings show that unpaid leave and involuntary separation were the most common immediate solutions adopted by the hotels.     

Backpackers in Hong Kong – motivations,preferences and contribution to sustainable tourism

This paper examines the backpacker market in Hong Kong, in terms of profile, motivation, preferences, and contribution to sustainable tourism development. The purpose is to provide an understanding of this market to help in marketing and promoting services and products that meet backpackers’ needs as part of expanding Hong Kong’s target market. Currently, Hong Kong relies on tourists from mainland China and recent reports reveal the issue of social conflicts between mainland tourists and Hong Kong residents. Based on a survey of backpackers in youth hostels and hiking trails in Hong Kong, this study revealed that backpackers are pushed by the search for new ideas and pulled by the uniquefood culture of Hong Kong, preferring to experience such a unique food culture in a traditional setting. Moreover, they are less likely to spend on international brands in Hong Kong as part of promoting sustainable tourism development.     

The Sustainable Tourism Development in Hong Kong: An Analysis of Hong Kong Residents’ Attitude Towards Mainland Chinese Tourist

This study examines the local residents’ attitudes towards the Mainland Chinese tourists visiting Hong Kong and identifies both the extrinsic and intrinsic factors influencing these attitudes. Results showed that Hong Kong residents perceive Mainland Chinese tourists very positively due to their important role in Hong Kong’s economic development. However, it is undeniable that their negative and dissatisfactory attitudes are also very apparent. Based on the findings, Hong Kong residents can be defined as “ambivalent supporters,” and the negative impact of this attitude on tourism development in Hong Kong is becoming very influential. In the long run, how to change local residents from “ambivalent supporters to “ardent supporters” needs to be addressed in order to ensure the healthy development of Hong Kong inbound tourism.     

Exploring Marketing Strategies for Culinary Tourism in Hong Kong and Singapore

This study focused on Hong Kong and Singapore and sought to explore culinary tourism development and marketing strategies and contents. The study also analyzed the framework of marketing strategies for developing culinary tourism from a resource-based theory perspective. The methodology primarily involved in-depth interviews with strategy planners on tourism boards and content analysis of academic documents and official publications on tourism as means for exploring marketing strategies for culinary tourism in Hong Kong and Singapore. The results showed that, although Hong Kong and Singapore do not have abundant natural resources to develop more diverse tourism experiences, they do have a diversified dietary and cultural background, and with a combination of tourism and creativity they could develop culinary tourism that is innovative, diverse and likely to attract attention. The public and private sectors could form strategic alliances to enhance the attractiveness of tourism through different marketing strategies and thereby present an image of the destination's culinary culture.     

Predictivity of tourism demand data

As tourism researchers continue to search for solutions to determine the best possible forecasting performance, it is important to understand the maximum predictivity achieved by models, as well as how various data characteristics influence the maximum predictivity. Drawing on information theory, the predictivity of tourism demand data is quantitatively evaluated and beneficial for improving the performance of tourism demand forecasting. Empirical results from Hong Kong tourism demand data show that 1) the predictivity could largely help the researchers estimate the best possible forecasting performance and understand the influence of various data characteristics on the forecasting performance.; 2) the predictivity can be used to assess the short effect of external shock — such as SARS over tourism demand forecasting.     

The Determinants of the Travel Demand on International Tourist Arrivals to Thailand

The purpose of this study is to develop a travel demand model of international tourist arrivals to Thailand and to assess the impact of crisis incidents on Thailand's tourism industry. A 20-year (1987–2006) annual time series data of “number of international tourist arrivals”, “exchange rate”, “promotion budget”, and dummy variables of “Asia financial crisis”, “special promotional campaigns”, “SARS” and “tsunami” were used to develop the travel demand model by performing a multiple regression analysis. The results showed that travel demand of international tourist arrivals to Thailand could be explained by “exchange rate”, “promotion budget”, “Asia financial crisis” and “SARS”.     

Projected Images of Major Chinese Outbound Destinations

This study aimed to explore the projected images of major outbound destinations based on popular travel magazines in China. Travel articles on Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan from 2006 to 2008 were content analyzed. Japan was reported on most, and the projected images of the six destinations are dominated by leisure and recreation, and culture, history and art. Correspondence analysis was used to examine relationships between destinations and popular image attributes. The results showed that South Korea and Macau had distinct projected images, whereas Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam shared many similar image attributes. Practical implications for destination marketing organizations are provided.     

Residents' Perceptions Toward the “Chinese Tourists' Wave” in Hong Kong: An Exploratory Study

Mainland China experienced an extraordinary progress in its economy in the past two decades which directly stimulates more outbound travels. Considering the geographical proximity and political ties between Hong Kong and Mainland China, the share of inbound tourists to Hong Kong has been, and will continuously be, largely occupied by Mainland Chinese tourists on an uprising basis. The phenomenon of the “Chinese tourists' wave”, operationalizing as the influx of tourists from Mainland China, has brought tremendous change on Hong Kong's tourism industry, economy and local community. It is, thus, of necessity to understand the perceptions and response toward this phenomenon from local residents' perspective as they are the stakeholders of local tourism. Drawing on the findings from three focus group interviews with 18 Hong Kong residents, three conventional dimensions, namely “Economic”, “Social-cultural” and “Environmental” were identified and discussed to demonstrate the local residents' perceptions toward the impact of “Chinese tourists' wave” phenomenon. Generally, residents tend to recognize the positive economic impacts as well as negative social–cultural and environmental impacts generated from this tourism phenomenon. The recommendations suggested in this study also serve as a reference for tourism authorities concerned to redress the existing problems.