Tourism in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is expected to get a shot in the arm during the upcoming Labor Day Golden Week holiday as the city launches a raft of activities and strengthens collaboration with the Chinese mainland to attract visitors.

The city is expected to welcome approximately 800,000 mainland visitors during the five-day holiday from May 1 to 5, up 30 percent year-on-year, said Fanny Yeung Shuk-fan, executive director of the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong.

She also said she expected some 800 tour groups with up to 28,000 travelers to come to Hong Kong during the holiday.

Mainland visitors are likely to opt for short-haul trips and Hong Kong could be one of the sought-after destinations as there are only five days for the holiday, Yeung said on Wednesday.

The city will hold a fireworks display on the first day of May and a drone show on May 11, in a move to capture the expected tourism boom during the Labor Day Golden Week

Hong Kong is intensifying efforts to boost its tourism industry to drive economic growth through the launch of a series of mega events and enhanced promotion on the mainland.

The city will hold a fireworks display on the first day of May and a drone show on May 11, in a move to capture the expected tourism boom during the Labor Day Golden Week.

Hong Kong has also formed a strategic partnership with mainland social media lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu for the first time, aiming to strengthen cooperation on cultural tourism promotion.

The latest statistics from the Hong Kong Tourism Board show that the number of visitor arrivals in Hong Kong reached 11.23 million in the first quarter, representing a 1.5 times increase year-on-year and a five-percent growth from the fourth quarter of 2023.

Among the arrivals, approximately 8.7 million, or 77.5 percent, were visitors from the mainland from January to March, soaring 159.1 percent from the same period a year earlier.

With a growing number of Hong Kong residents heading north, a travel boom in the opposite direction has also been seen.

According to a recent report by online travel agency Tongcheng Travel the search volume — the number of times people search for a keyword online - of tourism products of Guangdong’s main cities by Hong Kong and Macao residents surged nearly 300 times year-on-year in the first quarter. 

Among the major sources of search for tourism products of Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Zhuhai over the three-month period, people from Hong Kong and Macao ranked second and third, respectively, the report showed.

Many Hong Kong and Macao travelers to Guangdong cities were young people, with those under 30 accounting for nearly 40 percent of the total and students aged below 23 taking up over 12 percent.

Contact the writer at sally@chinadailyhk.com