Hong Kong: Rebound underpinned by hard work

In the special administrative region on the Pearl River Delta, one of Asia’s premier international trade fair hubs, the event scene is flourishing again after the pandemic.

According to the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB), this positive development owes much to sustained government support and close collaboration between the private and public sectors. MICE tourism in the city recovered fast in the first six months of 2024. Hong Kong is hosting over 60 large international MICE events between 2024 and 2026, including many highly regarded trade fairs, some of which are coming to Hong Kong for the first time or only launched there recently, such as Super Terminal Expo 2024 and Airspace Asia Pacific 2025.

“These successes are a vote of confidence from the events’ organisers,” says Phoebe Shing, a director and the MICE business development team lead at the HKTB. “They also offer resounding evidence of their organisers’ belief that they can leverage Hong Kong’s strengths to continue to grow their trade fair portfolios. We will be sustaining this momentum and fuelling further growth by stepping up our promotional activities and working closely with our partners in Hong Kong,” she stresses. The annual exhibition survey of the Hong Kong Exhibition & Convention Industry Association (HKECIA) is an important barometer of the performance of the industry, and the latest one confirmed this upward trend. It showed that 125 trade fairs taking up exhibition space of over 2,000 square metres each were held in the special administrative region in 2023. That represents growth of 30 percent compared to the previous year, and there were also marked increases in the numbers of exhibiting companies and trade fair visitors.

Hong Kong’s trade fair industry has thus made what is regarded as excellent progress in bringing premium groups of visitors back to the city, according to the HKECIA. “This is a rebound we have been expecting and which our exhibition venues and organisers in Hong Kong have worked hard to make happen,” comments HKECIA chairman Stuart Bailey. The Hong Kong government’s Incentive Scheme for Recurrent Exhibitions (ISRE scheme), which was launched in July 2023 at a cost of 1.4 billion Hong Kong dollars (161 million euros), has helped greatly. The scheme is designed to support the recovery of the exhibition industry by encouraging organisers to stage recurring trade fairs in Hong Kong. “The survey shows that the government’s investment is already paying off handsomely, with both organisers and visitors flocking back to Hong Kong in significant numbers,” asserts Bailey.

On the one hand, this rebound of Hong Kong’s trade fair industry after the pandemic is a reflection of the city’s long-standing solid fundamentals. At the same time, both buyers and sellers benefit from the rich market potential resulting from the development of the Greater Bay Area’s economy. And that, in turn, means that the prospects for the trade fair industry in the city look promising, according to the HKTB (www.hktb.com).