Jimmy O. Yang the Greatest Influencer for HK

Yang is enjoying the view and raking in the dough in HK

The Hong Kong Tourism Board pretty much hit the jackpot when it invited Chinese-American comedian and actor Jimmy O. Yang to come to the city to perform and see the sights.

People were madly scrambling for tickets to his five shows -- at the Hong Kong Coliseum in Hung Hom -- but the website kept crashing but somehow all the seats were snapped up.

Only Cantopop stars get to perform at the Coliseum, but Yang was the exception -- as he was invited by HKTB and by extension, the Hong Kong government.

He had five sold out shows in the Coliseum

While he was in his hometown, Yang visited the sights, like Man Mo Temple, and hung out in cha chaan tengs, ate stinky tofu on the street, showed viewers how to eat chicken feet, got a chop made in the lane in Sheung Wan, and even went to Chow Sang Sang's original Castle Peak Road store where he checked out their gold necklaces and apparently bought some bling bling.

"I spent my childhood in Hong Kong and have always felt the city's unique vibrancy. It's a place where tradition and innovation merge, allowing you to traverse between a century of culture and natural beauty in a single day. Every journey is full of surprises, revealing Hong Kong's diverse urban landscape," he said.

Sounds more like that's what the HKTB wrote his script.

Which makes us more curious about how much he was paid to perform and visit some requisite places to promote Hong Kong as a cool travel destination. From his video it looks like he stayed at The Peninsula...

Yang visited Man Mo Temple

With over 2.46 million fans following Yang on Instagram, the HKTB certainly got a lot of eyeballs on Hong Kong and it's a natural fit really. 

But since they figured it out, does he know he lost a lot of Hong Kong fans' respect after selling out?

The tourism board invited 650 KOLs or "key opinion leaders" in the first quarter of 2025, more than the total for all of last year. But that's not all. There will be another campaign called "Seeing is Believing", where Hong Kong will invite more than 100 international influencers in July and August.

Bringing in KOLs seems to be working. In the first four months of this year, Hong Kong welcomed 16 million international visitors, a 10 percent increase from the same period last year.