Socio-political Unrest and Tourism Crisis in Hong Kong: A Critical Incident Approach

Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Emmanuel Gamor is a full-time PhD student at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He received his Masters degree from the University of Cape Coast (Ghana) and he is interested in Sustainable tourism, technology in tourism and human resources management and development in tourism.

Hakimeh Nasiri is a full-time PhD candidate at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She has over ten years of job experience in tourism and hospitality. Her research interests are Tourism Experience, Aesthetics of Everyday Life in Tourism.

Dr Markus Schuckert is an Associate Professor in the School of Hotel & Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 17 Science Museum Road, TST-East, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR (E-mail: markus.schuckert@polyu.edu.hk).

Abstract (150 Words)

A review of world news headlines on the last half of 2019 revealed consistent unrest in Hong Kong. The Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Movement led to the decline of tourism in Hong Kong before the emergence of the COVID-19. Using the critical incident technique, we, adopted content analysis of news items on the protests timeline and travel warnings together with descriptive statistics of tourist arrivals, and tourism growth to assess tourism in Hong Kong. Due to the unrest, growth rate of Hong Kong’s tourism dropped to -43.72% by the end of October 2019. The study suggests that tourism industry is sensitive to shocks of ongoing social unrest. Though is possible to forecast protest actions it is hard to foresee the verge of collapse of a system rocked by a slowly developing ongoing social crisis, affecting consumer confidence, which led tourism in Hong Kong to a near-total collapse before COVID-19 pandemic.

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Socio-political Unrest and Tourism Crisis in Hong Kong: A Critical Incident Approach

A review of world news headlines on the last half of 2019 revealed consistent unrest in Hong Kong. The Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Movement led to the decline of tourism in Hong Kong before the emergence of the COVID-19. Using the critical incident technique, we, adopted content analysis of news items on the protests timeline and travel warnings together with descriptive statistics of tourist arrivals, and tourism growth to assess tourism in Hong Kong. Due to the unrest, growth rate of Hong Kong’s tourism dropped to -43.72% by the end of October 2019. The study suggests that tourism industry is sensitive to shocks of ongoing social unrest. Though is possible to forecast protest actions it is hard to foresee the verge of collapse of a system rocked by a slowly developing ongoing social crisis, affecting consumer confidence, which led tourism in Hong Kong to a near-total collapse before COVID-19 pandemic.