With the rebound of Hong Kong’s tourism industry, the number of tourists visiting Hong Kong has been rising steadily. Some surveys have found that visitors to Hong Kong nowadays prefer in-depth historical and cultural activities over shopping activities. Prof. Glenn McCartney, Associate Professor of the Department of Integrated Resort and Tourism Management at the University of Macau, was invited to participate in a discussion with other industry experts and listeners on the new trends in the development of the tourism industry in Hong Kong and Macau on Radio Television Hong Kong’s “Backchat”.
Experts who participated in the discussion considered that the factor of change in the mode of traveling to Hong Kong from simple shopping to in-depth cultural exploration was worth looking into, and also provided reference for the diversified development strategy of Hong Kong’s tourism industry. At present, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region can pay more attention to the application of social media platform interaction and artificial intelligence technology in destination tourism promotion to enrich the diversified experience of tourists.
When asked about the current state of diversification of Macau’s tourism industry and whether Hong Kong could learn from Macao’s development strategy, Prof. Glenn said that due to the composition of the government’s revenue as well as some historical reasons, Macau’s diversification efforts for tourism industry still had to revolve around gaming enterprises. As for Hong Kong’s tourism industry, he believed that it is necessary to identify the target markets for some of the current diversified tourism products in order to attract potential customers.
Meanwhile, Prof. Glenn emphasized the relative advantages of the use of social media in exploring new travel experiences. Real-life examples show that in addition to new and exciting products and venues, the new generation who value interactive experiences will also be attracted to the promotion of historical and cultural sites when browsing social media platforms. Therefore, one of the questions post-pandemic is how travel professionals will appeal to this group of people.
Prof. Glenn suggested that the HKSAR Government’s Tourism Board and related departments should actively capture the hot tourism trends on social media platforms and integrate them with the historical and cultural activities of the destinations in order to increase the participation of tourists in interactive experiences. Prof. Glenn also said that he would continue to pay attention to the popular trends on social media platforms, which would be a very important part of the future development of the tourism industry.
