Every year, thousands of mainland tourists flood into Hong Kong during the Qingming Festival holiday, but this year, the number of tourist groups has dropped by 20 percent compared with last year. And the number of tourist arrivals last month also saw a year-on-year 9 percent slump¹.

Joseph Tung, executive director of the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong, says the city's tourism industry is experiencing its hardest time since the "SARS" pandemic in 2003.

"We haven't seen such sharp drop since SARS. I think there are two factors. On one hand, the currencies in neighboring countries are depreciating², while Hong Kong dollars are relatively³ strong. On the other hand, the protests against parallel goods traders and some impolite behavior towards visitors have left the impression that they are not welcome in Hong Kong. "

Official figures show that retail⁴ sales in January went down nearly 15 percent from a year ago, with sales of jewelry⁵ and watches plunging⁶ 21 percent.

A shop owner in the prime shopping area of Causeway Bay for the past decade says she feels the chill recently.

"It is not as busy and crowded as it used to be. The number of individual tourists is falling. The other countries are opening up to mainland people, so they go to other places rather than coming to Hong Kong."

As a result, the official organization overseeing tourism in the city, the Hong Kong Tourism Board, is planning to make campaigns together with restaurants and retail stores during the summer holiday, to attract tourists with discounts and other preferential policies.

President of the Hong Kong Federation⁷ of Restaurants and Related Trades Simon Wong hopes the government can work with tourism insiders to boost consumption.

"We have 24-thousand restaurants providing different kinds of food. It is important to have a common goal but we don't have enough resources to make it on our own. We had a successful lottery⁸ campaign in Hong Kong restaurants before, with the participation⁹ of lawmakers. "

Hong Kong Disneyland is actively¹⁰ promoting in Thailand and Philippines, and will fine tune its strategies in line with market demand.

Due to sluggish¹¹ sales, rental¹² rates in Causeway Bay, which was crowned as the highest rent street in the world back in 2012, has declined by 10 to 15 percent, and is expected to drop more if consumption does not pick up soon.

For CRI, this is Li Jing in Hong Kong.