Hong Kong’s two major cruise ports, Kai Tak and Ocean, handled a total of 1.7m passengers in 2017, up 4.4% on the previous year, according to air4casts.

 

However, over 700,000 cruise passengers were Hong Kong ‘homeporters’ who chose to begin and end their cruise holiday from the Kai Tak or Ocean terminals. “They soared by over 58% last year”, says the traffic analyst firm.

 

In 2007, just 133,000 passengers were Hong Kong homeporters, insists air4casts and that number dropped to 100,000 during the global financial crisis of 2009.

 

But by 2015 the market had more than trebled to 379,000 and last year the number of cruise passengers starting and ending their holiday in Hong Kong had rocketed to 708,000.

 

OVER HALF OF HOMEPORT CRUISERS LIVED IN HK

“Between them the Hong Kong Chinese, mainland Chinese, Macau and Taiwanese cruisers accounted for 80% of all holidaymakers who started their cruise from a Hong Kong cruise terminal last year,” says air4casts.

“Over half of homeport cruisers lived in Hong Kong itself and they have more than doubled in number since 2016. A further 20% of 2017’s homeport cruisers came from the Chinese mainland, whilst outside the local market only Americans and Australians reached the top 5.”

 

Interestingly, outside the Greater Chinese region it was the Indian cruisers who grew fastest in Hong Kong homeport cruise terms last year, and that growth was significant.

 

“Indian nationals starting their cruise directly out of Hong Kong soared 255% last year to over 12,000,” adds air4casts. “Japanese cruisers were not far behind in both growth and volume terms Malaysian homeport cruisers increased 145% to just under 10 thousand whilst Thai nationals upped their count by 69%.”

The latest homeport cruise numbers for the first quarter of 2018 show no let up in the rapid pace of Indian homeport cruisers who were again up well over 200% on the same period in 2017.