Illuminated decorations are seen at Victoria Park in Hong Kong ahead of the 25th anniversary of the city’s return to the motherland, June 18, 2022. (PHOTO / XINHUA)
Throughout the 25 years since the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the city that had been put on a pedestal by the world, has gone from strength to strength, nourished by the dynamism, agency and competence endowed by progressive national policies, said Pansy Ho Chiu-king, managing director of Shun Tak Holdings, a Hong Kong-listed conglomerate with core interests in property, transportation, hospitality and investments.
Hong Kong’s GDP rose from $76.9 million in 1990, to $177.4 billion in 1997, and to $346.6 billion in 2020. “Hong Kong has continued to be a crucial international hub for Asia, representing a major gateway to the Chinese market, and vice versa, bringing tons of Chinese mainland businesses to the SAR city for financial support, thanks to superior policies and programs granted to Hong Kong by the central government,” said Ho.
Joining the Shun Tak Group in 1995 as executive director and being appointed managing director in 1999, Ho is ideally placed to chart how the watershed moment transformed Hong Kong for the better, especially how it moved the needle to Hong Kong’s tourism segment and economy.
Reminiscing about her early forays into public and corporate relations as well as entrepreneurial investments in the early 1990s, Ho said many Hong Kong enterprises she worked for were upbeat about and eagerly anticipated the establishment of the HKSAR. Those far-sighted enterprises already had future plans up their sleeves ahead of July 1, 1997.
Fondly recalling a conversation with her father Stanley Ho Hung-sun, the legendary businessman and casino tycoon, over a family dinner, Pansy Ho said, “I asked my father, ‘What about our (Shun Tak) family business? What have we planned ahead to embrace the handover?’” Her father responded, ‘We’re a patriotic family and our business has already built connections with the mainland.’
It is through the ingenuity of our own people who treasure but constantly innovate on the presentation of our cultural stories, which makes sure Hong Kong’s tourism never goes flat.
Pansy Ho, Managing Director, Shun Tak Holdings
‘But is that enough?’, quizzed Pansy Ho. This provided food for thought over the conglomerate’s vision and strategies. She believes that her father was primed mentally, organizationally, structurally and strategically for the exceptional opportunities that were about to be unfurled.
Hong Kong’s past 25 years have been blessed with landmark achievements, putting the SAR on the international map. The introduction of the Individual Visit Scheme in 2003 was groundbreaking, adding flourish to the city’s tourism and hospitality sector, said Ho. Hong Kong had already shone as an international tourism destination before the scheme was initiated. But the central government’s move to fling open Hong Kong’s door to mainland travelers transformed the SAR into a tourism hub. If you look at the tourist arrivals, Ho said, “(before 2003) there were some 11 million visitors per year. Now, the last count in 2018 (before the COVID-19 pandemic) was at 65 million.” The number of Chinese mainland visitors to Hong Kong had increased sixfold in 15 years.
The signing of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement in 2003, another moment-defining development, made Hong Kong an even more seductive place for conducting business, especially for those international entities yearning to have a presence in the mainland market, said Ho. “Hong Kong has since become more important as a convention and trade exhibition center, where serious trade exchanges and significant fairs are conducted by leveraging Hong Kong’s role as an intermediary.” The trade business has flourished, with the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and Asia-World Expo continuously expanding and upgrading their facilities, she noted.
These factors all contribute to the tapestry of Hong Kong’s fetching cultural persona characterized by multiculturalism and East-meets-West eclecticism, diversity, inclusivity and versatility.
When we travel in other cities, we might find ourselves stuck in a groove of “cookie-cutter” itineraries shared by other travelers or repetitively touted in guidebooks, said Ho. This constrains the imagination of travelers and makes the city vulnerable when a crisis comes its way. Whereas the culturally accommodating and all-embracing mojo that Hong Kong exudes, sets itself apart from other metropolises, and prepares the city for external challenges, conditioning itself to adapt, create and improvise to counter adversity. This is particularly true in the tourism and the hospitality sector, said Ho.
While the disruptive pandemic caught the industry by surprise, it forced the industry to reshape its service model and reimagine its tourism offerings. For example, the addition of staycations and domestic travel gained rapid and wide currency.
In this undated photo, Pansy Ho Chiu-king, managing director of Shun Tak Holdings, talks to China Daily during an interview. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
“Hong Kong is a free market. Its people are open-minded and receptive. It is through the ingenuity of our own people who treasure but constantly innovate on the presentation of our cultural stories, which makes sure Hong Kong’s tourism never goes flat,” said Ho.
In a nutshell, the dazzling range of components in Hong Kong’s culture gives its tourism and hospitality industry multiple “legs”. Despite one leg crumbling when a crisis hits, it won’t force the whole segment to collapse, as more improvisational “legs” appear to supplement and complement the existing legs.
China is steeped in venerable traditions and a diverse culture with distinctive nuances representing every region. To allow international tourists a thorough understanding of China, there’s a need for a “multiple stops, one destination” tourism offering that inspires them to spread their footprint across the country and explore hearty cultural treasure troves, said Ho.
Hong Kong is well positioned to take the “citylink tourism” initiative with other Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area cities in Guangdong province, where Lingnan culture that Ho strives to promote, enjoys a wide reach.
“Now with this convenient network of transportation and infrastructure, wouldn’t that make sense to make your whole journey even more productive or interesting by visiting more than one place in a trip? After all, these places are linked by a common heritage, but at the same time, each has gone on to develop its own unique distinct flavor,” she said.
The “neighbor city journey” radiating from Hong Kong to cities in Guangdong as well as Macao is a sound proposition, said Ho. What makes such a trip within the Greater Bay Area beguiling is that visitors would intuitively fine-tune their lens and frame of mind to read about and decipher each city, because each city’s culture, despite the same root, sprouts “slightly different kind of derivatives” and blooms with “a multitude of varied interpretations”, noted Ho.
Hong Kong’s unique edge in spearheading this lies in the fact that “we have over 100 overseas representations through consuls.”
Ho co-chairs MGM China Holdings based in Macao, one of the leading developers, owners and operators of gaming and lodging resorts in China. The ethos of MGM China — “Originality + Innovation” — alludes to the milieu in the Greater Bay Area, where technology and innovation dominate and steer its economy. This resonance in mentality and strength, if harnessed effectively, could forge a more powerful synergy, and the result will be greater than the sum of its parts. It’s been on Ho’s mind. This is anything but a figment of her imagination because the synergy fostered through actual collaborations has gone done well. A case in point is, Ho said, a visual fireworks extravaganza involving the employment of drone technology provided by Shenzhen and visual orchestration of fireworks displays by Macao. Another “immersive show” will come next year, co-produced by MGM and “a very prominent Chinese digital visual art company”.
Looking ahead to the prospect of better integration of Hong Kong into the Greater Bay Area and the whole national development, Ho is hopeful of seeing more cross-border exchanges in “people”. By “people”, she means “talent”, “manpower” and “trainers” or veteran practitioners across the board, tourism and hospitality sector included, who can raise the practice standards of cultural facilities as well as tourism and catering services. “The natural flow created by human exchange will allow Hong Kong to become more aware of building affinity with our motherland, and also galvanize our mainland fellow citizens to come to Hong Kong seeking opportunities while facilitating Hong Kong to cement its bridging role between the East and West.” At the end of the day, Ho believes the long-term continuum of reciprocal opportunities and mutual benefits between HKSAR and the Chinese mainland is a sure thing.