Where Did Mainland Visitors Go?

Around 11K mainland visitors come daily to Hong Kong

It is day eight of the Lunar New Year and the windfall of Chinese tourists flooding Hong Kong did not happen.

There had been reports before the Year of the Rabbit began that some 1 million people applied for visas to travel to Hong Kong and Macau.

Shops did not see flood of tourists as expected

Perhaps the majority of them decided to stay closer to home instead?

So far 64,000 people visited Macau on average everyday during the Lunar New Year, of which 37,800 were from China. In contrast, during the same period, only 23,000 people visited Hong Kong daily, and only 11,000 of them were from the mainland.

Newspaper editorials like the one in the Hong Kong Standard are complaining that it took Hong Kong much longer than Macau to settle a deal with Guangdong to drop PCR tests, and the daily cap of visitors coming in either increased or scrapped entirely.

Hong Kong's outgoing deputy at the National People's Congress Standing Committee, Tam Yiu-chung, says he expects Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu to announce the removal of the PCR test mandate for those traveling between Hong Kong and the mainland tomorrow.

Macau seeing way more mainlanders than HK

If that happens, that could help salvage the last few days of the Lunar New Year, or looking long-term,  hopefully entice more people to come back to the city.