Tourism planning requirements from a private sector perspective: the case of Hong Kong

Government’s role in tourism planning has shifted from control to consultation, and many governments have adopted economic planning that move the responsibility for investment in infrastructure from the public to the private sector. In Hong Kong, the government has not articulated a clear tourism policy to guide tourism development but continues to assume responsibility for significant tourism infrastructure investment. This paper considers the views of the private sector towards tourism planning in Hong Kong, which gravitate towards the need for a formalized planning. The tourism sector supports the interventionist policies that have been a characteristic of the government’s relationship to the tourism industry in the past, believes that the current approach to planning needs to be replaced by a formal planning process, and that there is a need to include community groups in the policy determination process. The insights gained from the case of Hong Kong may serve as a reference for other destinations.