Luxury retail chains are losing their once-iron grip on Hong Kong’s shopping streets, as COVID-19 keeps visitors away and forces the city to shift toward restaurants and bars catering to residents.
Across the Asian financial hub, one in five shops targeting mainly Chinese tourists and selling jewelry, medicine, cosmetics, clothing and leather goods has closed since the third quarter of 2018 — before pro-democracy protests and the pandemic dealt blows to the city’s economy — according to data from the research arm of real estate agency Midland IC&I Ltd.
The number of restaurants and food grocery outlets, by comparison, has grown 9% during the same period.