Hong Kong Food Festival
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The Hong Kong Food Festival (Chinese: 香港冬日美食節) is a food festival organised by the Hong Kong Asia Exhibition (Holdings) Limited. It is held annually (usually in December around Christmas) at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, selling and promoting a variety kinds of food, drinks, snacks and many more. There are different zones for various kind of customers.
The first Hong Kong Food Festival was organized in 2003, when Hong Kong was suffering under the effect of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic. Due to the epidemic, people's willingness to buy decreased and the local market was suffering. To stimulate consumption, the organizer, Hong Kong Asia Exhibition (Holdings) Ltd organized both the Hong Kong Food Festival and Hong Kong Mega Showcase in December, near Christmas. By holding both exhibition near the holidays, the organizer aimed not only to encourage local consumption and stimulate the economy, but also to bring the joy of holidays to Hong Kong through a carnival style exhibition, so as to revitalize the atmosphere in Hong Kong at that time.
Theme and past trends
The first exhibition was a success and thus it kept the theme of “carnival” for all the later years. It was promoted as a food carnival of celebration towards the upcoming Christmas with happiness and satisfaction.
Over the course of 12 years there has been significant increase in number of visitors, including foreign visitors. According to statistics from the 2014 Hong Kong Food Festival, the total visitors over the period of 5 days reached 1.21 million people, accounting to a 15% increase comparing to the year 2013. While among all visitors, 83.7% of the visitor are 2.8% are from South East Asia, 3.6% are from European and American Countries and 1.7% from other Asia countries. Most participants are families as recorded, with 52% of them among all visitors. The other half consist of students, couple and trade buyers with similar percentages.[1][2]