Hong Kong tourism has significant impacts on the economy and the effects of government spending and policies are also very large. However, there are very few studies which investigate the economic impacts of Hong Kong tourism and the effects of government expenditures and policies on the tourist industry. Thus, this paper divides into two parts. The first part analyzes the contribution of Hong Kong tourist industry to the Hong Kong GDP and employment. The results show that the tourist industry has significant effect on private consumption expenditures and export of services. However, the tourist industry is not a good employment generator to the Hong Kong economy. The second part uses time-series analysis to estimate the coefficients of the explanatory variables for the tourist arrivals and expenditures from the U.S. and Japan. The results show that incomes of the generating countries, consumer prices in Hong Kong and the two countries, population of different age groups in originating countries and the total expenditures of the Hong Kong Tourist Association have different impacts on the tourist arrivals and expenditures of the two respective countries. Beside these factors, we also use qualitative methods to find out the effects of government policies on the development of Hong Kong tourism, such as promotional work by the HKTA, adequacy of infrastructures, and financial supports etc. Hong Kong tourism faces a lot of problems in recent years, such as high prices of consumer goods, high prices of hotel rooms and the lack of supply of hotels and human resources etc. Also, the number of tourists have fallen sharply recently.
| Date of Award | 27 Oct 1998 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | |
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| Supervisor | Lok Sang HO (Supervisor) & Kui Yin CHEUNG (Co-supervisor) |
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