Occupy Central protests may be boosting tourism in Hong Kong

The Occupy Central democracy protests in Hong Kong have certainly been disruptive, but perhaps not as badly so as people thought. In fact, the protests may even have boosted tourism.

While the luxury industry in Hong Kong is suffering from the anti-corruption campaign in mainland China, the numbers coming to have a look at the protests seem to be helping make up some of the shortfall.

According to data from the Hong Kong government, total visitor numbers were up 12.6 per cent from October 2013 at 5.214 million, with the number of mainland visitors up 18.3 per cent to 4.027 million. This comes despite restrictions on travel from the mainland.

Hotel room occupancy was a healthy 88 per cent during the month.

There was also a strong rise in the number of tourists from north Asia, up 7.1 per cent in October. The total number of tourist arrivals in Hong Kong in the year so far has been 49.873 million.

Among those benefiting from the improved visitor numbers is the Ocean Park theme park, which had 600,00 entries in November, according to the newspaper Ming Pao.