“Hotel industry still short of 9,000 workers, importing workers becomes an unavoidable necessity”
Despite Hong Kong returning to normalcy six months ago, tourism numbers have not met expectations. In an interview with Hong Kong Hang Seng University’s the SCOM Talk Show, Caspar Tsui, the Executive Director of The Federation of Hong Kong Hotel Owners admitted that the pace of recovery for the tourism industry is slower than anticipated.
The primary factors behind this lag are an aging population compounded by acute manpower shortage in the hospitality sector due to fierce inter-industry competition. It is currently estimated that there is a shortage of around 9,000 workers. Tsui expressed that the current volume of tourists has only rebounded to roughly 60 to 70 percent of pre-pandemic levels.
He believes that the industry would struggle to cope if tourism completely returned to pre-pandemic levels and emphasized that the recruitment of labour from outside Hong Kong is an inevitable measure to address these challenges.
