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Roundup: Disneyland to Bring Opportunities, Challenges to HK Tourism
The planned Hong Kong Disneyland will bring both opportunities and challenges to Hong Kong's tourism industry, industry leaders have claimed.
The 22.5-billion-U.S. dollar theme park project, announced 15 months ago by the Hong Kong government, is expected to create 18, 400 new jobs and attract five million visitors within the first year of its opening in 2005.
The increased demand for suitable hotel accommodation and the threat of a shortage of tourism talents are two major challenges likely to arise from the Hong Kong Disneyland project, said industry leaders attending a two-day Disney conference which ended Tuesday.
Extra hotel rooms required, the marketing of the theme park as well as the extra visitors and training staff to meet new demands are challenges to be met by the government and the tourism industry, said Donald Tsang, Hong Kong's Financial Secretary.
According to Hong Kong Tourism Association Statistics, there are about 35,000 hotel rooms in Hong Kong and this is projected to rise to about 45,000 by the time the theme park opens.
However, only about 30 percent of Hong Kong hotel room supply is in the medium and low price category, said Dough Barber, vice president of Hong Kong Century International Hotel and a speaker at the conference.
He estimated an extra 5,000 rooms, or 12 new hotels, would be needed in the next four years to meet the accommodation demand arising from the Disney project.
Since Disney hotels will be comparatively high price properties, Barber said, there will be a lot of demand for local industry to provide moderately priced, family-oriented hotel rooms.
"Hong Kong hotels must focus on reasonable pricing and excellent value" and not price themselves so as to create too many other opportunities for neighboring locations, like Macao or Shenzhen, where Disney visitors can find lower-priced accommodation, he said.
James Lu, executive director of the Hong Kong Hotels Association, stressed there are similarities between Hong Kong and Tokyo, which also boasts a Disney theme park. He advocated a " Tokyo Disney model" where almost all hotels encourage visitors to visit the Tokyo Disneyland.
Ray Pine, professor of the department of Hotel and Tourism Management at Polytechnic University of Hong Kong, called on the government and the tourism industry to take actions immediately to train good-quality tourism talents.
Hong Kong is relatively well provided for in terms of education and training for hotel and tourism industry, but, the city is likely to face a tourism brain drain as skilled people are now flowing into hotels in emerging markets such as the Chinese mainland, where tourism talents are better respected and rewarded, said Pine.
Pine also identified other problems in the catering sector which may hamper Hong Kong's tourism development, such as Hong Kong people's deficiency in language ability, both in English and Chinese.
"The government should take a lead in this area to ensure that general schooling, for example in English and Putonghua, as well as specific hotel, catering and tourism education are adequately provided for, " Pine said.
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