香港推广旅游业
时间：2015-04-09 00:09:56
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（单词翻译）
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.
香港推广旅游业
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
tune11 its strategies in line with market demand.
Due to
sluggish12 sales,
rental13 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.
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