HK malls offer free parking for first time in 20 years
Measure to lure shoppers comes as some 541,000 people leave city on second day of Easter break
Some of Hong Kong’s big shopping centres are offering free car parking for the first time in more than two decades in a bid to lure customers, with hundreds of thousands of people leaving the city for a second straight day over the Easter holiday weekend.
Yesterday, about 541,000 people, including around 439,000 residents, had left the city as of 9pm, according to Immigration Department data. About 376,000 people entered over the same period.
Many of yesterday’s outbound travellers at the Lo Wu control point said it took them up to half an hour to cross the border and the process was largely smooth, marking a shift from the huge crowds and long waiting times at checkpoints a day earlier.
Some of Hong Kong’s large shopping centres, including Harbour City in Tsim Sha Tsui and Times Square in Causeway Bay, adopted motorist-friendly policies to drive footfall, with a queue of vehicles waiting outside the former at about lunch time. Times Square granted patrons two hours of free parking a day, which could be raised to a maximum of seven hours with spending.
Harbour City, Hong Kong’s largest shopping centre with more than 2,000 car park spaces, is offering five hours a day of free parking and up to 10 hours if customers spend at the mall or restaurants, a promotion unseen since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars, in 2003.
The Post found motorists queuing along Canton Road in Tsim Sha Tsui waited between 15 and 45 minutes for a space at Harbour City. Some drivers appeared to give up, having waited just five minutes.
Jewellery salesman Bharat Singh, 46, lined up for about half an hour in his convertible before he reached the car park entrance. He was trying to spend the holiday around Tsim Sha Tsui with his two daughters, he said.
“It is a good perk,” he said. “The location is very convenient, and you are free from worries you have to go back and refer to the meter every hour if you park your car on the street.”
Singh said they would have lunch in the mall to claim the full 10-hour free parking before going to Victoria Harbour. Five hours of parking costs up to HK$170.
Retired teacher Lu Qiuhui, 63, who arrived from Nanjing in Jiangsu province on Friday, was waiting in the queue with his Hong Kong-based son. He said his son had learned about the free parking on mainland social media platform Xiaohongshu and that it was a good enticement because spaces were hard to find in commercial districts such as Tsim Sha Tsui and Central.
“We will spend the parking money on getting better food at the mall instead. Then, we will take the ferry to Central,” Luo said. “The wait has been smooth. And others line up patiently.”
A total of 795,610 people, mostly residents, left Hong Kong on Friday, while another 370,218 entered the city. Back in 2018, a record year for tourism, 722,250 people left Hong Kong on Good Friday while 396,839 came in.
Family of four Chris Yau, Ling Chan and their children, aged seven and nine, were among those making earlier cross-border trips yesterday.
They arrived at Lo Wu before 9am to avoid the huge crowds. Chan said they started planning the three-day trip to Shanwei city in Guangdong a month ago.
“It is the first time we are taking our daughter and son to Shanwei,” the housewife said.
Chan said she and her husband, who works in finance, expected to spend about HK$4,000 for the trip, with around HK$2,000 of that on hotel expenses and the rest for dining as well as shopping.
Housewife Mandy Wu and her 12-year-old daughter and eightyear-old son left their home in Mong Kok at about 8am to take the train to Lo Wu, where they joined two other families for a two-day trip to Shenzhen.
Wu, 37, said the 10 of them would visit some popular attractions such as theme parks Window of the World and Shenzhen Happy Valley, and she expected to spend between HK$2,000 and HK$3,000 for the trip plus about HK$400 on a hotel.
She said despite visiting Shenzhen about a dozen times since the border reopened after the coronavirus pandemic, she was still enthusiastic about making the trips because of the lower prices and better service.
“Things are expensive in Hong Kong, while there are more choices in Shenzhen, and people there are nicer and have better service attitudes,” she said.
Many Hongkongers also joined two- to three-day tours to Guangdong cities.
Social worker Bobo Cheng, 58, and her husband, together with five relatives, joined a two-day tour to Huizhou city, along with about 30 other Hongkongers, departing from the Shenzhen side of the Lo Wu border.
She said it was had become a trend among her family and friends to visit mainland cities during holidays, as Hong Kong was losing its “vibe” while there were many places of historical interest to visit across the border.
“Hong Kong used to be a vibrant and lively city with its own characteristics, but it is losing its special vibe,” she said, adding the government did little to stimulate local consumption.
“The government mainly focused on attracting mainland and foreign tourists to Hong Kong, but did not do much to encourage local residents to stay and spend money in the city,” Cheng said.