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Written by: Huang Shunyang
2021-01-20 17:35
The last update date: 2021-01-20 17:35
After four waves of new crown pneumonia outbreaks in one year, Hong Kong has already suffered from "epidemic fatigue". Even if you can't travel abroad, you still want to go out.
However, entering 2021, there are still dozens of new confirmed cases in Hong Kong every day. The public cannot see the end of the epidemic, and the economy cannot get out of the haze of the epidemic. Among them, the tourism industry can be described as an indefinite recovery.
The industry’s "tourism bubble" and the Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao "health code" mutual recognition system have been postponed time and again. The entire tourism industry chain-hotels, retail, catering, aviation, travel agencies, etc., is almost dying, and the latter two are particularly serious.
For example, the largest local airline has long been in financial difficulties, and it slashed more than 5,000 employees in November last year. In the first nine months of last year, 73 travel agencies closed down. Their business and revenue have plummeted, and the industry has fallen into an "freeze."
It is difficult to predict when people’s lives will return to normal. The number of tourists visiting Hong Kong will not return to the pre-epidemic level overnight. What is even more worrying is whether the already precarious tourism industry still plans to " "Food for money", relying on "high-volume, low-value" shopping groups, and carts of tourist buses to To Kwa Wan for shopping?
Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor launched the "Green Living Local Tourism Encouragement Scheme" and "Encourage Hong Kong Island South" in his "Policy Address" at the end of last year. It seems that he wants to use eco-tourism to promote industrial upgrading.
However, compared with the previous profit model that relied on "high volume and low value", industrial upgrading means reorganizing the industrial chain, that is, redistributing tourism resources and benefits.
To bring the already precarious travel industry back to life, we must first understand the underlying structural root causes.
Long before the outbreak of the epidemic, the growth of total global tourist arrivals and total global tourism revenue has shown signs of slowing down.
According to the World Tourism Economic Trends Report (2020) released by the World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) in January 2020, the growth rate of total global tourist arrivals has remained at 4% since 2016. Last year, it increased by 0.9 percentage points to 4.6%, and the total number of tourists reached 12.31 billion, but the growth rate was still slower than that from 2011 to 2015
(see Figure 1)
.
At the same time, the total global tourism revenue in 2019 reached 5.8 trillion U.S. dollars, equivalent to 6.7% of global GDP, and the related proportion fell for two consecutive years
(see Figure 2)
.
Although the global tourism economy has generally maintained growth, people's demand for tourism is gradually changing.
As the report points out, the "economic and organizational model of the 20th century" can no longer meet the needs of private customization in the 21st century. The digital age has brought about earth-shaking changes in the tourism industry chain.
The rapid development of information technology, aviation industry, and transportation infrastructure has made domestic and foreign travel easier, and it has also brought people greater travel "freedom"-freely combine itineraries and purchase required services, and no longer need to rely on traditional travel agencies When arranging itineraries, there are many products for consumers to choose from, and people are more sensitive to the price of tourism products.
This is both a challenge and an opportunity for the traditional tourism industry.
(Hong Kong 01 drawing)
(Hong Kong 01 drawing)
Changes in passenger demand impact the industry ecology
Leiming Mai, an associate professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, described that with the continuous improvement of global education and language levels, "individual travel" has replaced traditional tour groups, and is also available for Ctrip and Expedia. Online travel agencies (OTAs) and booking websites that freely arrange their itineraries provide the soil for development. "Now the needs of travelers have become simple. They only need air tickets and hotels, and there is no need for travel agencies to plan the itinerary and arrange accommodation. This is all tourism. Business opportunities brought about by changes in form." This change is also impacting the industry ecology of traditional travel agencies.
Mai Leiming believes that large online travel agencies have stronger bargaining power and can obtain more favorable prices from airlines and hotels. "In contrast, some small and medium-sized travel agencies are not competitive. Why do travelers want to What about traditional travel agencies?"
In addition, full-service airlines are facing the challenge of low-cost airlines.
As the upstream of the tourism industry chain, aviation, transportation, and catering industries can bypass intermediary companies through online reservation systems and directly provide consumers with competitive products
(see Figure 3)
.
This "disintermediation" trend has also weakened the competitiveness of emerging online travel agencies and booking sites.
(Hong Kong 01 drawing)
In 2019 alone, this rapid change has shaken Thomas Cook, a traditional British travel brand with a history of 178 years. Its integrated business model that integrates aviation, travel, and hospitality is "unable to recover from debt problems." ".
In addition, in the same year, French airlines Aigle Azur and XL Airways, as well as online hotel booking platform Amoma, went bankrupt or went bankrupt accordingly.
But this does not mean that traditional forms of tourism have completely lost their competitiveness.
Online travel agencies also have their own restrictions. Mai Leiming pointed out, "OTAs can only provide simple travel products, and more complex services (such as sending an additional tour guide) are not available. TripAdviser's Hong Kong branch has only six people. "Euromonitor International, a market research agency, released in 2019, "The Big Trends Shaping the Future of Tourism", based on the research of more than 1,000 experts, and found that as many as 43% of consumers around the world said that they value experience more than real objects. .
In addition to paying attention to the "price-performance ratio" of travel products, the survey also found that most of the respondents want a more authentic and localized travel experience.
Mai Leiming pointed out that this is the "breakthrough" of traditional travel agencies. "This experience also includes visiting local communities, participating in activities, learning about local culture, and even cooking and baking cakes. It is a kind of satisfaction of knowledge, culture and curiosity. ."
Leiming Mai, an associate professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, described that with the continuous improvement of global education and language levels, "individual travel" has replaced traditional group tours.
(Profile picture)
Experiential tourism may become the future development trend of the tourism industry. However, depending on the data of the tourism industry in Hong Kong before the epidemic, both the overall market and the mainland tourists who are the main source of Hong Kong tourism (in 2019 accounted for the total number of visitors to Hong Kong) 78.3%; the non-overnight market accounted for 85.7%). Visitors to Hong Kong still spend mainly on shopping, but the retail industry in Hong Kong has shown a downward trend in recent years.
According to Bauhinia Research Center's "Future "Tour": A Review of the Twenty Years of Hong Kong's Tourism Industry" (hereinafter referred to as "Review"), quoting figures from the Tourism Development Board to point out inbound tourism from 2014 to 2018 The number of employed people fell from 240 thousand to 225,300. The decrease was mainly due to the "retail industry". The reason was that shopping consumption by tourists fell from 208.9 billion yuan in 2014 to 167.1 billion yuan in 2018.
In contrast, the number of employees in cultural and entertainment services increased from 6,700 in 2000 to 24,000 in 2018, which more than tripled, but the overall number of employees is still less than one-ninth of the retail industry.
Even though the global tourism industry continued to grow before the epidemic, the consumption level and the number of employment in Hong Kong's tourism industry has fallen into "fatigue"; when the travel demand of global tourists has changed, the industry has not made timely adjustments and seized new development directions. In order to get out of the development "bottleneck", for example, the consumption of local tour groups has fallen year by year. In 2018, only 0.3% of overnight tourists’ spending was spent on local tour groups. The situation for overnight tourists from mainland China is even worse, accounting for only overall consumption. Of 0.1%.
The above figures are sufficient to reflect that Hong Kong's tourism industry has been trapped by internal and external troubles before the epidemic: the internal factor is the insufficient development of tourism resources, the rigid internal structure of the industry, and the overdraft of Hong Kong's tourism reputation; the external reason is that the mainland's duty-free zones and online shopping platforms Development has continuously weakened the competitiveness of Hong Kong's tourism industry.
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The above excerpt was recorded in the 249th issue of "Hong Kong 01" Weekly Report (January 18, 2021) "The Tourism Industry Is in Danger Before the Epidemic". If you want to read the full text, please
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