Mainland Chinese tourists coming to Hong Kong on Saturday and Sunday made it a record-breaking weekend for this month, driven by K-pop girl group Blackpink\u2019s shows, while the figure was just 2 per cent below New Year\u2019s Eve and New Year\u2019s Day footfall.<\/p>\n
Hotel and retail industry leaders said on Monday the three-day concert series had attracted crowds of local and mainland \u201cBlinks\u201d \u2013 the nickname for Blackpink fans \u2013 to Kai Tak.<\/p>\n
They urged authorities to explore more celebrity tie-ups to promote the Hong Kong brand and its cultural heritage, and to host new events to drive tourism.<\/p>\n
The concert at Kai Tak Stadium on Monday marked the final performance of the band\u2019s \u201cDeadline\u201d world tour that began last July, with singer Ros\u00e9 capping off her tradition of sampling local snacks on camera with fish balls, after tasting an egg waffle and a sip of milk tea over the past two nights.<\/p>\n
Chung Pok-man, vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Department Stores and Commercial Staff General Union, said the flavours tasted by Ros\u00e9 and Thai member Lisa\u2019s visit to Che Kung Temple showcased local heritage and could drive tourism.<\/p>\n
\u201cApart from looking at it from numbers, we should also look at the concert\u2019s impact on promoting the soft power of the city, such as tourist spots and the culinary scene,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mainland Chinese tourists coming to Hong Kong on Saturday and Sunday made it a record-breaking weekend for this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[15943,181198,181196,49,48,181195,181197,181200,75,15674,181204,181201,181199,139122,181203,27539,181202,341,44,6372,30399],"class_list":["post-436243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-blackpink","tag-blackpink-concert","tag-blinks","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-che-kung-temple","tag-chung-pok-man","tag-dorsett-kai-tak","tag-entertainment","tag-hong-kong","tag-hong-kong-department-stores-and-commercial-staff-general-union","tag-hong-kong-tourism-association","tag-kai-tak","tag-kai-tak-stadium","tag-kam-tin","tag-lisa","tag-mainland-tourist-arrivals","tag-music","tag-news","tag-rose","tag-scmp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}