Some of the best brains in the travel industry get together with officials and academics to dig deep into the potential offered by sustainability, putting forward a wealth of innovative solutions
Government officials, leading experts and travel industry insiders in Hong Kong pose for a photo with organizers from China Daily Hong Kong Edition during the second Mastermind Roundtable on Wednesday. (ANDY CHONG / CHINA DAILY)
Amid the whirlwind of global traveling following the long months when everyone was compelled to stay at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospitality and tourism industry is celebrating a handsome economic rebound.
But the jubilant clamor still can’t drown out the buzz of concern among Hong Kong industry leaders over “sustainability” — both economically and environmentally.
Some of the industry’s foremost practitioners laid out their insights, desires and proposals at a special seminar on Wednesday, eventually agreeing that while Hong Kong has come a long way on sustainable tourism, there is still an immense area to be explored hand-in-hand with top-down guidance.
Organized by China Daily Hong Kong Edition, the light-hearted discourse touched on the theme “The Thorny Issue of Sustainable Tourism and Hospitality: Can It Really Drive Economic Growth and Development?”.
Sustainability is often touted as a panacea for the industry’s woes, but the balancing act of developing tourism and conserving local cultural heritage as well as the environment is fraught with difficulty.
The exclusive Mastermind Roundtable brought together leading business executives, government officials, and academics from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to discuss regional developments and trends.
“It’s wrong if you see sustainable practices (in hospitality) as a cost. Casting your visions farther, you’ll reap medium-to-long-term revenues from sustainability,” said Giovanni Angelini, founder of Angelini Hospitality and former chief executive officer of Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts.
“How do you measure your emissions?” Angelini asked those delegates who had been involved in either tourism or hospitality. “If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
Incentives are essential to grease the wheels of decarbonization and sustainable economy, which Angelini believes should come in the form of a carbon tax. “Finland was the first country in the world to introduce a CO2 tax in 1990 and is now one of the cleanest countries in the world. A properly measured carbon tax would get the attention of all, top executives in particular.”
To get the ball of sustainable tourism and hospitality rolling, the industry has to start with scrutinizing the basics, running the gamut from energy, water, wastage and recycling, to indoor air, building insulations, quality of boilers, air-conditioning, and so on, Angelini stressed.
Incorporating renewable energy into tourism is of prime importance in this day and age, as climate change has never slackened, he said. “At the end of the day ‘sustainability’ is the most pressing challenge of our time.”
The very idea of sustainable tourism and hospitality has a fuzzy definition and is open to interpretation. The World Tourism Organization under the United Nations has a stab at spelling out the concept: “Make optimal use of environmental resources that constitute a key element in tourism development, maintaining essential ecological processes and helping to conserve natural heritage and biodiversity. … Respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities, conserve their built and living cultural heritage and traditional values, and contribute to inter-cultural understanding and tolerance.”
Chan Yu-nam, senior geopark officer of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, commented, “In promoting sustainable tourism, we always adhere to the principles of protecting and promoting geological, ecological and cultural heritage holistically.” Only in that way, she said, could visitors truly understand, appreciate and treasure protected places.
“Hong Kong has many industrial buildings, such as those in Chai Wan, Kwai Chung, and Tsuen Wan. These places used to house many industrial undertakings until most factories moved to the Chinese mainland, leaving many of these industrial buildings looking for a more sustainable use,” said Tristance Kee, senior lecturer of the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning at the University of Hong Kong.
These industrial buildings, robustly built to withstand garment manufacturing, printing, and other heavy factory operations, are of unique architectural character. They are mostly constructed with an orthogonal layout, featuring large windows and high ceilings, and should be preserved to testify to the legacy of Hong Kong’s built heritage.
“If we do not preserve these 50-year-old industrial buildings now, we will not have 100-year-old heritage in 50 years. Hence, the sustainability of Hong Kong’s built heritage can be preserved through conservation practices such as adaptive reuse,” said Kee, suggesting that there are plenty of reasons to repurpose these robust and heritage-rich buildings, to fulfill their cultural and functional reincarnation.
Omnipresent potential
As part and parcel of sustainable tourism, cultural heritage revival may not be such a tall order. Resources are readily available: the mottled buildings are out there, the wear and tear on those weathered structures is a tell-tale narrative of their backstory, and local rituals may well be held dear by senior citizens who have stayed put. What we need is people in the know who could help unearth these obscure cultural assets, revitalizing and breathing new life into them, according to the experts.
Melanie Kwok, assistant general manager for sustainability at Hong Kong Heritage Conservation Foundation, is sure of the answer: “Tai O Heritage Hotel has been recognized by local and international communities for its engagement with the community, including an Award of Merit at UNESCO 2013 Asia-Pacific Cultural Heritage Conservation Awards. We hope the heritage and collective memories will be passed on to future generations.”
“The hotel provides employment opportunities and training to Tai O residents. Today, half of its workforce comes from Tai O and Lantau, with some employed as eco and cultural experience tour guides. The restaurant, Tai O Lookout, works with local brands and uses ingredients from Tai O to deliver authentic tastes,” said Kwok.
When it comes to rejuvenating it with a contemporary touch, “we’ve initiated ArtWalk@Tai O, a public art program to bring arts to the community. Ten murals were set up at various locations in the picturesque village, celebrating its charm and character,” said Kwok.
Much the same is happening in Sai Kung, where the Kau Sai Village Committee office was converted into a Kau Sai Village Story Room which displays traditional fishing tools and common local medicinal herbs, said Chan.
Who is in the driver’s seat of the story room? The locals who dwell in the picturesque village tucked in the south corner of the island.
Such lesser-known villages and parks might have fallen into obscurity without proactive revival in Hong Kong, said George Hang, a public park pioneer who runs George Hang Design. The potential of these treasure troves is immense, he said.
Sustainable tourism is far more than reviving and preserving heritage buildings for sightseeing purposes, argued Douglas So, chairman of Antiquities Advisory Board. How sustainable tourism goes down with the public profoundly depends on “the software” value afforded to tourists. “Why do people flock to M+ Museum, to the Palace Museum, to Tai Kwun? Because the programs are exciting and unique,” said So. A compelling shell with a hollow soul could appeal, but won’t stand and endure.
Ong Chin-ee’s analogy between tourism and durians could best illuminate what essential element in tourism should take pride of place for sustained relevance. “Tourism can drive sustainable economic development if we can get beyond the ‘thorns’ (running tourism simply for numbers) and focus on the flesh of the fruit,” said Ong, who is the associate professor of Tourism Management at the Sun Yat-sen University.
“By this I mean we look at aligning tourism development with the development of livelihoods, preservation and balanced utilization of traditions and cultures and nature.”
A high-maintenance task
Douglas Young, co-founder and chief executive officer of Hong Kong lifestyle brand G.O.D, suggested we take a cue from Croatia, which has a thriving tourism industry, for sustainability and heritage answers.
Taking the ancient Roman city of Split as an example, Young illustrated how heritage buildings can be modified to cope with modern tourism needs. “You just have to look at the modern intervention, the modern touch-up of the street signs (displaying tourist information),” he said. “It is actually very well designed and very well thought-out. They use the same font, the same style. And throughout the towns, the designs of those street signs are consistent.
“I don’t think it is by accident. I think in Hong Kong, we need to pay attention to this kind of detail in order to attract sophisticated visitors.”
When it comes to targeting tourists, he encouraged Hong Kong to look at the most sophisticated and intellectually minded group. “This category necessarily includes high-spending visitors. However, in order to include those who are less well-off, we should offer culturally sophisticated experiences at different price points. It is clear that the reverse scenario doesn’t work, that is to say: we cannot offer the lowest common denominator type experiences and expect to go up-market,” he said
Top-down lead
Multi-level collaboration and government support were two themes shining through the talk given by Jeff Tung, Head of Special Projects at New World Development.
“I think it’s worthwhile for the government to reconsider its policy for heritage conservation. I’m not saying this in monetary terms. ... If a private developer is keen to conserve a heritage site, I am sure they are more than welcome if there is a dedicated office to provide necessary support and to champion the liaison process with different government departments,” said Tung.
Regarding regulation on heritage conservation, Tung expects to see a more pragmatic approach taken by the local authority as each heritage site has different merits and constraints.
Tung said that heritage economics has been accepted as one of the main pillars of sustainable development. “In welcoming this new era of a living heritage economy, Hong Kong and the whole GBA are destined to play a significant role,” he added.
Speaking at the right timing of the first anniversary of the Hong Kong Palace Museum, Brian Yuen, deputy director of Museum Operations at Hong Kong Palace Museum Ltd, boiled down its success recipe to “3 Ps” — partnership, people and personal effort.
Aside from signing MOU and contracts, “we have corporate sponsors who provide financial resources and small NGOs who actually are on ground with the underprivileged groups engaged. So, we bring in more than 80,000 school tour students into the museum every year and 120,000 underprivileged tickets sponsor, who gives us the funding, before we distribute the tickets,” he said.
Like-minded “people” working together embody collective wisdom, manpower, fervor and morale. The HKPM has roped in more than 600 volunteers as tour guides, many of whom being PhD students, retired school principals, and teachers, he said.
Of equal importance is “personal effort” in the sustainable tourism formula, by which Yuen means “to start from ourselves, convince our family and friends, traveling sustainably”, Yuen added.
To encourage more local communities to hop on the sustainable tourism bandwagon, “certification and standardisation” system may well be introduced to for their due recognition, said Fanny Yeung, executive director of Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong urban designers sometimes find themselves up against a brick wall, not because they are at their wits’ end creatively, but because their creative pitch is decided to be economically unviable by the authorities, said Horace Pan, chairman of Hong Kong Interior Design Association, who recounted an unsuccessful proposal of a Star Ferry tour. “We need policies (for translating ideas into reality).”
As the mania of “revenge tourism” sweeps across the world in the wake of the pandemic, David Wong, lecturer of the department of management at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, cautioned that the continuous white heat of tourism could turn sour, sabotaging the economic, social and cultural harmony.
From January to May 2023, visitor arrivals exceeded 10 million in Hong Kong, accounting for about 40 percent of pre-pandemic levels, according to research by Wong. To accelerate post-COVID economic recovery and to meet the full-year target of 26 million visitors, a continuous input of international visitor arrivals is required to sustain the tourism economy synergy in the long run, he said.
However, the effect could err into detrimental “overtourism”, where the city’s “social carrying capacity” might burst at the seams, warned Wong. In other words, an excessive influx of tourists could overwhelm the city’s capacity for accommodating the population and therefore undermine or even sabotage residents’ quality of life.“That will be unsustainable for Hong Kong’s economic development,” argued Wong.
Obviously, there is no shortcut to sustainability. It really takes flexibility, agility, resilience, and determination. It’s an odyssey for sure, and an elusive one, but experts believe, it is by no means a dead end.
