I wish I had been a tour guide back in the late 1970's!

**Me Jamie, your host, I am English and I have lived in Hong Kong for 53 years - I know the place.**
**I have personally completed 2,300+ Private Experiences (over 6,000+ guests) since April 2011 and I am considered one of the finest Private Tour Guides in Asia.**

**A blog post with a difference**
**Please do visit Hong Kong in 2025 | Travel, Tourism, Tours, Tips, Daily Life and my personal thoughts on Hong Kong.**
**Hong Kong | Pearl of the Orient**

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Discover Hong Kong - Pearl of the Orient

Learn about the unbiased, real Hong Kong | forget what you read in the press!

Learn more | The day I did a private tour of Hong Kong with a famous princess

Marketing Hong Kong Tourism prior to 1970

I wish I had been a tour guide back in the late 1970's!

Hong Kong Culture | A Personal View

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Marketing Hong Kong 50 - 100 years ago was much simpler!

The Most Amazing Panoramic City View in the World - Victoria Peak | 1973

The Most Amazing Panoramic City View in the World - Victoria Peak | 50 + years later and yes, this is my image taken with my Sony Digital Camera RX1 R Mark 2 - no filters used

This is my Hong Kong | Hong Kong Back in the Day

click on the image to enlarge

I get all misty eyed and nostalgic when I see old art travel and tourism posters promoting Hong Kong as a tourist destination and I wish that I had become a private tour guide in the late 1970’s, I would have made a killing that’s for sure…. times have changed, tourism has changed and how people travel has changed.

The Internet has changed everything and Instagram | Facebook | Tik Tok and social media in general have changed tourism forever, it will never quite be the same, a lot of the mystique that makes you want to travel has gone.

We arrived as a family in Hong Kong on January 2nd 1972 on a BOAC jet from London and I knew when we approached the old Kai Tak Airport that this would be my new home and I would never leave…. yes 53 years later I am still here and raised a family and I get to show my guests one of the great cities in the world.

Why is Hong Kong famous for tourism?

“Hong Kong is one of the world's most significant financial centres and financial ports, alongside the fact that it is also one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Hong Kong is a preferred tourist destinations in Asia owing to its subtropical weather and western lifestyle.”

“With a unique blend of East and West, old and new, Hong Kong has long been one of Asia ’s top tourist destinations. From high-end shopping malls to bustling street bazaars, ancient Chinese temples to towering skyscrapers, historic trams to high-speed trains, Hong Kong is a city of colour and contrast.”

Fairly standard quotable quotes on why one would visit Hong Kong.

Pearl of the East | Pearl of the Orient | The Riviera of the Orient

Those catchy slogans invoked a sense of mystery, wonderment and awe back then, there was no Internet to check, perhaps the odd guide book but nothing really to puncture your enthusiasm . Personally the one slogan that has resonated with me is Pearl of the Orient and much better than the oft touted “Hong Kong - Asia’s World City”

The Hong Kong Tourism Board and Brand Hong Kong are responsible for coming up with snappy slogans to promote Hong Kong and after Covid decimated Hong Kong Tourism for literally 3 years (our borders were effectively closed to tourists and non residents) they really had to put their thinking caps on.

Here are a few slogans from the past and some of them are still in use

Let's Go the Extra Mile
Hong Kong - Asia’s World City (put into play in 1999 and still in use today)
Hospitable Metropolis
Hello Hong Kong
Night Vibes Hong Kong
Mega Events Destination
Creative Journey ... Infinite Discovery
Best of it all, it's in Hong Kong
Hong Kong Neighbourhoods
Hong Kong : The Worlds Most Dynamic City
Hong Kong will take your breath away (introduced in 2003 and withdrawn when SARS arrived in HK)
Hong Kong : East Meets West

The Hong Kong Government and the Media solicited in 2023 opinions on what slogans could be used to help promote tourism in Hong Kong

Here are a few of the suggestions

Our City, Our Home
Hong Kong: A City of Endless Possibilities
Channel Your Lion Rock Spirit
Welcome to Hong Kong, a place where Chinese and Western cultures blend

… and below, snappy slogans from Tourism Boards in countries around Asia competing for the Tourist $

I actually like the Hong Kong slogan but I would personally have preferred : Hong Kong - The World’s World City, the one I always remember is Malaysia | Truly Asia, for some reason that resonates with me.

The day after we arrived in 1972 we did a couple of coach tours, have a look at that “itinerary” above from Winston Travel.. it is entirely possible that we took 2 of these tours with Winston Travel, we stayed for a few weeks in the Merlin Hotel (since demolished) and the Winston Travel Office was just a minute or so walk from the Hotel and in those days there wasn’t a lot of Travel Agents offering tours of Hong Kong.

The point being is that promoting Hong Kong over the past 100 years has featured Victoria Peak and Victoria Harbour, they are our USP’s : Unique Selling Points.

In fact in most of my blog posts I feature 2 images of Victoria Peak (day view and night view) and I use this slogan | description

Victoria Peak | The Lugard Road Lookout View - one of the greatest panoramic city views in the World

Have a look at the Incoming Tourists Figures from 2 time frames in Hong Kong.

1966 - 1997
2002 - 2023

It is hard to get your head around at how much the numbers have gone through the roof since 2003, suffice to say that in most years since 2003 around 80% of the “tourists” were technically domestic tourists from Mainland China and that will be the case from now 2025 at least for another 5 years according to our Tourism Minister.

Sar’s changed everything, the bad publicity decimated tourism even though the event so to speak only lasted a few months and the Chinese Government stepped in and offered to send us tourists, how could we refuse? and bear in mind there are 1.4 Billion people living in China….. now we suffer from Overtourism a new buzzword that has spread around the world, I agree sometimes there is case for limiting tourism but that is a whole different story.

Hong Kong Incoming Tourism Statistics | 1966 - 1997

Hong Kong Incoming Tourism Statistics | 2002 - 2023

click on the image to enlarge

So back to the blog heading subject which in essence is how the Hong Kong Government promoted Tourism prior to 1970..

Things were different then, no internet and most people booked holidays through Travel Agents around the world (I am guessing that, that is the reason)

The movement to promote travel for leisure really took off in 1957, which just happened to be the year that the Hong Kong Government set up the Hong Kong Tourist Association!

“By 1957 airliners had replaced ocean liners as the preferred means of crossing the Atlantic. After World War II, passenger travel surged to new levels. When wartime travel restrictions ended, airlines were overwhelmed with passengers. New carriers emerged, and new technology began to revolutionize civil aviation.”

In Hong Kong the Hong Kong Tourist Association (HKTA) was formed in 1957 to promote Hong Kong as a Tourist Attraction and this organisation was replaced by the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) in 2001

So Hong Kong was promoted using visuals in the form of posters which would be on the walls of the Travel Agent, works of art I might add (there are hundreds of them to view online)

Of course in this day and age posters are largely irrelevant when there are literally billions of images and videos that have been uploaded to Social Media Platforms and because of filters that most people use (I do the bare minimum of changes on Photoshop, mainly just cropping) the images can make a muddy patch of grass look enticing.

… and yes, I have a favourite slogan “ Pearl of the Orient”

Still meaningful in 2025.

So there you go… Hong Kong is unique and retains that East meets West aura and if you have never been then please visit Hong Kong in 2025 onwards, it really is the World’s World City!