Number of visits to Hong Kong arts hub jumped 19% last year, hitting 15 million Hong Kong’s arts hub logged more than 15 million visits last year, marking a 19 per cent increase over the previous year’s number, with local events and international collaborations planned to further boost traffic. The management of the West Kowloon Cultural District also announced on Thursday that the hub had already recorded at least 400,000 visits since the beginning of April, thanks to activities during long weekends such as Easter and mainland China’s “golden week” holiday in early May. The series of events at the arts hub is part of an initiative to attract more visitors and revenue as it continues to find ways to wase its financial strain and reduce its operating deficit, with measures including the sale of 1,995 residential flats on site. “Summing up 2024, over 1,300 events took place at the cultural district including exhibitions and performances, among which 500 were private events from venue rentals, attracting over 15 million visits,” said Betty Fung Ching Suk-yee, CEO of the arts hub. The managing authority commissioned an impact study and found an estimated 12.6 million visits were made to the cultural district in 2023, which was likely lower than the actual number, according to a representative. It added the methodology for counting visitor numbers had changed in the past year to rely more heavily on a new system with sensors across the district put in place for “more accurate” figures. In March and April alone this year, the cultural district logged 3.8 million visits to various offerings such as the “Picasso for Asia: A Conversation” exhibition, the announcement event for the Hong Kong China Rugby Sevens Team and the WestK FunFest. Over the four-day Easter long weekend, the arts hub held a coffee festival, which led to more than 50,000 visits. Together with other events at the arts hub, the number for the holiday soared to over 180,000, a more than twofold increase, year on year. “The event was described as ‘a miracle in a flailing economy’. All coffee beans and products brought to the city by exhibitors from Japan, the Greater Bay Area and local ones were sold out, with the performance far exceeding expectations,” Fung said. The hub recorded 220,000 visits for two other events that took place over the golden week holiday, WestK Nightscapes and Sip & Groove@WestK featuring music, alcoholic beverages and local snacks. Fung also highlighted that the arts hub management visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in early April to explore collaboration opportunities in the areas of talent training, programme tours and expertise sharing. She added that the cultural district had already struck a deal last year to bring its I.M. Pei exhibition at the M+ to Qatar in November, while the Museum of Islamic Arts from Doha was also bringing about 100 masterpieces – including carpets, ceramics, metalwork, manuscripts and jade pieces from the 1500s to 1920s that underscored Islamic and Chinese cultural connections – to Hong Kong next month. The arts hub averted a financial crisis when the government in July of last year lifted a limitation under which it could only rely on the build, operate and transfer model for some commercial projects to gain revenue. The announcement came when the district said it had enough funds for less than a year’s operation, as the government’s one-off HK$21.6 billion (US$2.7 billion) endowment in 2008 was set to run out. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/article/3310513/hong-kong-arts-hub-records-19-visitor-surge-welcoming-15-million-2024 (ICE HONG KONG)

Fonte notizia: South China Morning Post