October 3, 2023
HONG KONG – Hong Kong saw a surge in visitor arrivals during the first three days of the Chinese mainland’s Golden Week holiday, with nearly 1.2 million people visiting the territory.
The city recorded 1,198,086 arrivals from Sept 29 to Oct 1—290,072 on Friday, 394,166 on Saturday, and 513,848 on Sunday–according to data from the Immigration Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government.
They included a total of 669,804 Hong Kong residents, 459,449 visitors from the Chinese mainland, and 68,833 arrivals from other places. There were also 1,385,756 departures recorded during the period.
The Golden Week holiday lasts from Sept 29 to Oct 6.
The two busiest boundary checkpoints were those at Lo Wu and Lok Ma Cha Spur Line (Futian crossing) which handled a total of 550,676 and 483,686 travelers, respectively. Lo Wu handled over 200,000 travelers on Saturday and Sunday.
On Sunday night, over 430,000 spectators gathered along both sides of Victoria Harbor to see the National Day fireworks display after a five-year hiatus.
The Hong Kong Tourism Board said last month that over 20 million visitor arrivals were recorded from January to August this year. Of this number, 16.5 million were visitors from the mainland.
Hong Kong also saw 4.1 million visitors in August, a 14 percent month-on-month increase and equivalent to 84 percent of the pre-pandemic level.