But the good times returned in 1999. Visitor arrivals reached 10.6 million, representing a rise of 11.5 per cent over 1998's figures, and they continue to roll in with 5.17 million visitors entering Hong Kong in the first five months of 2000. In May alone, arrivals totalled 1.06 million, up 18.1 per cent on May 1999.

The ever-growing mainland market undoubtedly helped push up these figures. It has been Hong Kong's largest source of tourists for the past three years, accounting for 28.9 per cent of total arrivals last year, or 3.08 million visitors. Consequently, the government and tourism industry is putting great emphasis on developing this market. They were followed by 2 million big-spending Taiwanese, or 18.7 per cent of the market but 21.5 per cent of tourist receipts, compared to the mainland's 26.4 per cent share.

In May this year, the mainland market accounted for almost a third of all visitors with 334,287 arrivals, representing a 27.9 per cent increase over the same month last year.

Encouraging as these figures are, they distort the fact that other markets have not fully recovered their pre-handover share. For much of the 1990s, for example, the important North Asia market (Japan and South Korea) accounted for about 20 per cent of total arrivals, and peaked in 1996 with 23.8 per cent. In 1999, it accounted for 12 per cent. For the January-May 2000 period, it rose slightly to 13.4 per cent.

Another important market for Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, also hasn't managed to bounce back to levels of the first half of the 1990s, along with the Americas market.

In fact, if the two largest markets, mainland and Taiwan, which account for almost half the market, hadn't continued their double digit growth, total arrivals for 1999 would not have been so rosy.

But the HKTA's figures for January-May 2000 show the non-Chinese markets are this year coming back with a vengeance with almost all-registering double-digit growth.

Hotels filling up

More people filing through immigration means more business for hoteliers, regardless of where they are from. This has pushed average occupancy rates up to a very healthy 81 per cent in May, compared to a year ago.