Coronavirus and the retail apocalypse

Hong Kong feels extremely strange at the moment.

The last year or so has been pretty rough for many businesses with the impact of the protests, but this is another level entirely.  Malls and other shopping areas have been emptied of people and businesses are starting to struggle.

During the worst of the protests, you could still generally avoid the most heavily affected areas.  If you weren't around the areas where there were protests, you life would still continue on for the most part without any disruption.  In fact, if you weren't actively following it on the news and your public transport wasn't impacted, you wouldn't even really know that the protests were happening at all.

This time, the impact has spread across most of the city.  Tourist numbers, particular from China, have completely collapsed.  I have read that the daily inflow of visitors from China has dropped from approximately 100,000 people a day, down to less than 1,000 a day.  These visitors from China represent the vast majority of all tourism into the city.  Everywhere you go, you'll see restaurants and shops closing, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently.  The shopping malls are incredibly quiet, with some of the more famous brands actively slashing their prices, something which you don't normally see in Hong Kong.

It doesn't seem to be hitting any particular area or class of shops either.

The fanciest malls, such as Pacific Place in the Admiralty area is extremely quiet and the crowds of high end shoppers are gone.  On the other end of the spectrum, even the McDonalds near my office has emptied of people.  It was incredible to see it so quiet at lunchtime on a weekday.  It's normally full of people at lunchtime jostling to get to the front of the queue.  Restaurants all through Hong Kong have been trying to deal with this problem through scaledowns or through outright closure.  It would be an incredibly tough time to be working in F&B at the moment.

After watching a movie on Saturday night, I decided to walk home with my friend.  We were both shocked at the lack of cars as we approached Central.  The intersection is normally crowded with taxis and other cars, and even the streets themselves normally have people wandering around.

Instead, there was nothing.

As we walked further along, we saw a cab rank with at least a dozen taxis patiently waiting.  It's a far cry from the days when it's the people who were patiently waiting for a cab.