Hong Kong’s inter-departmental festival taskforce confirmed late on 5 January that the city handled roughly 950,000 inbound visitors between 31 December 2025 and 4 January 2026. The figure represents a 40 percent increase on the same holiday period a year ago and is the clearest sign yet that Hong Kong’s tourism and business-travel engine is almost fully re-started.
Mainland Chinese travellers—helped by Beijing’s three-day New-Year public holiday—accounted for more than 740,000 of the arrivals, a 48 percent jump year-on-year. Non-Mainland markets delivered about 210,000 visitors, up 19 percent. To handle the surge, Hong Kong and Shenzhen immigration authorities temporarily extended Lo Wu passenger services to 02:00 on 1 January and kept Shenzhen Bay open overnight, while the Security Bureau activated its Emergency Monitoring and Support Centre.
![Hong Kong Welcomes 950,000 Visitors Over New-Year Weekend, Up 40 Percent Year-on-Year]()
Operationally, the city coped well. Extra e-Channels and counters kept average clearance times below 20 minutes and transport operators added late-night buses and cross-boundary coaches. Hotel occupancy averaged 90 percent, and crowd-control plans around major attractions such as Disneyland, Ocean Park and the West Kowloon Cultural District were credited with preventing the bottlenecks seen during Golden Week last October.
For global-mobility and travel-risk managers, the numbers matter. First, they confirm that Hong Kong has regained critical mass as a hub: executives visiting clients can once again expect near-normal flight frequencies and on-the-ground services. Second, peak-season staffing models must be reviewed—border agencies proved they can ramp up, but private-sector employers should build buffer time into itineraries that coincide with Mainland public holidays.
Looking ahead, officials are trial-ling a real-time “Easy Boundary” API that will publish live waiting-time data from every land checkpoint. Once released later this quarter, multinationals will be able to feed those metrics directly into travel-approval systems, improving duty-of-care and allowing same-day re-routing when crowds spike unexpectedly.
Mainland Chinese travellers—helped by Beijing’s three-day New-Year public holiday—accounted for more than 740,000 of the arrivals, a 48 percent jump year-on-year. Non-Mainland markets delivered about 210,000 visitors, up 19 percent. To handle the surge, Hong Kong and Shenzhen immigration authorities temporarily extended Lo Wu passenger services to 02:00 on 1 January and kept Shenzhen Bay open overnight, while the Security Bureau activated its Emergency Monitoring and Support Centre.
Operationally, the city coped well. Extra e-Channels and counters kept average clearance times below 20 minutes and transport operators added late-night buses and cross-boundary coaches. Hotel occupancy averaged 90 percent, and crowd-control plans around major attractions such as Disneyland, Ocean Park and the West Kowloon Cultural District were credited with preventing the bottlenecks seen during Golden Week last October.
For global-mobility and travel-risk managers, the numbers matter. First, they confirm that Hong Kong has regained critical mass as a hub: executives visiting clients can once again expect near-normal flight frequencies and on-the-ground services. Second, peak-season staffing models must be reviewed—border agencies proved they can ramp up, but private-sector employers should build buffer time into itineraries that coincide with Mainland public holidays.
Looking ahead, officials are trial-ling a real-time “Easy Boundary” API that will publish live waiting-time data from every land checkpoint. Once released later this quarter, multinationals will be able to feed those metrics directly into travel-approval systems, improving duty-of-care and allowing same-day re-routing when crowds spike unexpectedly.
Source: GovHK Press Release
