Wander around Hong Kong’s Harbour City on any given weekend, and among the crowds thronging the shopping mall, talk of a downturn might appear overdone. But it is quieter than in 2014, when queues of mainland Chinese formed just to get into luxury boutiques, driving sales that made the mall responsible for almost a tenth of the city’s entire retail spend.
Recent retail news in Hong Kong has been disappointing. Year-on-year sales were down 21 per cent in February, according to government figures, as Chinese tourists sought new experiences in cities such as Seoul, Tokyo and Paris. After stripping out price changes, this was the biggest fall in Hong Kong retail sales since September 1998. Chow Tai Fook, the largest Chinese jewellery chain, said this month that it expects profits to be down 40-50 per cent on “weaker consumer sentiment in [the] Greater China region”.
While Hong Kong’s swift change of fortune — as recently as 2014 Harbour City boasted the world’s highest sales per square foot — is unlikely to be exactly replicated elsewhere, it contains lessons for luxury watchers on how quickly China’s appetite for upscale goods and experiences can shift.