Hong Kong needs fixing, people…
It really is about turning interest into visits and these visits into sales and investments and turning negative perceptions into things that are positive.
Sounds easy enough, but this is what Hong Kong is facing when it comes to attracting tourists into a city that, let’s face it, has seen better days.
It’s where, seemingly, every day, especially in this social media driven world, bad news travels at the speed of light and faster than Buzz Lightyear.
Knowing Hong Kong for as long as I have, I can’t suddenly forget or erase the past and the life I’ve led, and what this amazing city has given me and one which I see as my best friend.
Hong Kong has a heart and soul that’s currently going through uncertainty with an aging population who want to see results yesterday because maybe their tomorrows don’t offer much hope?
As someone who has always believed that it’s people who make any city or country special, and gives it a brand personality, Hong Kong keeps proving my point over and over again.
In recent years,La Streisand is no longer singing how people needing people are the luckiest people in the world.
Talent in all aspects of life with the ability how to make this life better, plus those game changers with the vision to take what’s already here and make these something new and even better and relevant cannot be found.
Mother Superior has jumped the gun.
Maybe they’ve been kidnapped by AI and which I think is the enemy of creativity and keeping things from being real? But we can’t blame everything on Artificial Intelligence if us humans who are supposedly busy being don’t have the answers because we’re not busy doing.
These days, I see friends not interested in going out anymore because they don’t see the need to. They feel that there’s nothing out there for them, and how all this nothing could be a rerun of a rerun of a rerun of “Groundhog Day”.
Getting back to people making a city and how only people make things happen, apart from horse racing twice a week, what is there in Hong Kong with any “sustenance” and offering interest, excitement and even a modicum of curiosity?
Ocean Park? Disneyland? Tai Kwun? The Ferris Wheel? The Palace Museum?
Or is everything needed in life on one’s mobile phone?
Forget about those on the outside looking in. Who in Hong Kong knows what’s going on in these places mentioned and that are already here? And if THEY don’t know, and very likely can’t be bothered with what’s happening, would they even support new initiatives? And how?
Hong Kong holding events and exhibitions such as Fashion Week is good to have, but where’s the sustainability, and what’s the primary ROI?
When in advertising, and depending on the client, we had what were termed post campaigns.
These were created to keep interest alive AND, more often than not, gave us the time to think and absorb everything that had happened which often sparked off new ideas and other events aligned to “the mothership”.
I was explaining this to a friend recently and about a day in the life for me in the mid 2000s: Lunch at the Tiffin Lounge of the Grand Hyatt Hotel from 12.30pm to 3pm, some time wasting meetings at the same venue until around 6pm before walking down to the Champagne Bar and taking in the goings on at JJ’s next door before returning to the Champagne Bar and getting home around 3am.
Here’s what’s interesting: It was never pretentious, superficial nor boring because, apart from being with friends, we were having fun meeting and engaging with interesting new people in person and not online or through emojis, and with the word “interesting” having very different meanings.
Even the very weird and the most plastic fantastic international floor shows replete with fatuous grifters were entertaining, because we had a sense of humour and were open to being entertained.
Sure, we were younger then, but does age have to slow everything down to a baby crawl?
If I had the same mentality then that I have now- serial boredom- and which is very largely because of those circling my orbit, I would never have lived and loved everything Hong Kong has offered me.
Like what? Like a marriage, having lunch with friends at Jimmy’s Kitchen, enjoying the paella at Fernando’s Hideaway, exchanging ideas at La Taverna, having a very long jockeys lunch at California in Lan Kwai Fong, where we were going to do bigly things like launch The Tongue Scraper, enjoying the Curry Buffet at the Dicken’s Bar, unwinding at TOTT’s, singing very badly at karaoke sessions at Club BBoss…
Maybe some of us were fortunate, but let’s never ever forget that we made things HAPPEN for ourselves.
We weren’t ninnies feeling sorry for ourselves and looking for handouts. We took the bull by the horns and turned it into cattle prodders, because if we didn’t wake up and “do it” to ourselves, no one else would.
Sometimes it’s good to do it to yourself.
The bottom line: WE MADE THINGS HAPPEN!
The same goes for Hong Kong in 2026 and beyond: Don’t do anything except complain and reminisce and disappear online, and start singing the line “Hello, darkness, my old friend”, and, well, there’s no light and shade and magic coming in.
I am not a religious human being, but I do believe that we’re here to make good things happen.
Being in Hong Kong has been and is a privilege.
I am not banking on the government and organisations with everything and nothing to do anything for me.
How can they when they don’t even know what I want?
Me, I have work to do to give my old friend called The Kong inspiration and a heart.
Yeah, it’s a bit like being on that yellow brick road with Dorothy, Toto, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the cowardly Lion and knowing that there’s no Wizard and we’re not in Kansas.
The Wizard is us, we’re still in Hong Kong and there’s work to do.
Comments