The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has become very good at throwing a party. Now it needs to become better at what takes place after the party.
Concerts, soccer matches, art fairs, horse races, and international conferences have transformed the city’s events calendar. More than 130 major events in the first half of this year attracted about 1.75 million visitors and generated roughly HK$5.8 billion ($740 million) in consumption. More than 100 events are expected in the second half. These numbers are encouraging. But for Hong Kong’s first five-year plan, there is a more interesting question than how many people attend an event: What if the real economic value of an event begins when the event ends?
There is a useful concept emerging in event economics: the “ticket stub economy”. The idea is simple. The economic life of a ticket should not end when the concert finishes, the final whistle blows, or the conference closes. For Hong Kong, this offers a practical way to connect culture, sports, and tourism. Instead of treating an event as a stand-alone attraction, Hong Kong could treat it as the starting point of a much longer consumer journey.
Consider what happens. A visitor flies into Hong Kong for a concert, watches the performance, takes a few photographs, and heads back to the hotel or MTR station. Much of the opportunity disappears when the lights come on. Yet this may be precisely when people are most willing to spend. They are excited, social, and already out and about. Give them a reason to continue, and they might have dinner, shop, explore another neighborhood or stay an extra night.
Singapore offers a useful lesson. When US superstar singer-songwriter Taylor Swift performed six concerts there in 2024, the city turned them into a broader tourism phenomenon, with hotels, restaurants, shopping centers, and attractions participating in the visitor economy. Around 300,000 people attended, with overseas visitors accounting for roughly 70 percent, while the pecuniary impact was estimated at about S$500 million ($393 million) in tourism receipts.
Hong Kong does not need to copy Singapore concert for concert. It needs to understand the principle: An event is an economic platform. That applies to soccer as readily as pop music. A match at Kai Tak Sports Park should not necessarily end when the referee blows the final whistle. Surrounding districts could become part of the experience, with restaurants, shops, and attractions promoted as an informal “third half”.
Businesses around Kai Tak and Kowloon City are already adjusting opening hours, supplies, and promotions during major events. Some participating merchants have offered discounts on food, parking, retail, and accommodations, while some local businesses have reportedly recorded sales increases of 15 to 20 percent.
But organic activity has its limits. The problem is not necessarily a lack of offers. It is a lack of coordination. A visitor should not need five apps and three maps to discover where to eat after a soccer match. The ticket stub should do the work. Imagine an event ticket that also functions as a digital city pass, unlocking restaurant offers, hotel packages, transport options, museum admissions, and retail promotions. A soccer ticket could highlight participating restaurants near the stadium. A concert ticket could encourage visitors to arrive early and explore nearby attractions. A conference badge could offer delegates access to museums or neighborhood experiences after business hours.
Hong Kong is unusually well positioned for this model. Its compact geography means a visitor can move from Kai Tak to Kowloon City, Tsim Sha Tsui, Wan Chai, or Central relatively easily. The transport system is already there. What is missing is the orchestration. This is where the idea could become relevant to Hong Kong’s five-year plan. Rather than leaving every organizer and merchant to develop their own arrangements, the SAR government could consider a citywide framework for extending the economic impact of major events beyond the venue. Selected events could become pilot programs. Organizers, hotels, transport operators, district organizations, retailers, and restaurants could work from a common platform. Tickets could be linked to transport, dining, accommodations, and cultural experiences, with incentives encouraging visitors to stay longer or travel further.
The second change should be measurement. Hong Kong is very good at counting attendance. It should become equally good at measuring the ticket stub economy. How many visitors stayed overnight? How many hotel nights were generated? What was the average spend outside the venue? How many businesses benefited? How many visitors traveled beyond the event district? How many returned? These indicators would tell us far more than a headline attendance figure.
The third opportunity is time. Why not turn major events into weekends? A major city marathon is an obvious candidate. Instead of treating it as a single Sunday morning race, Hong Kong could turn it into a wider sports weekend, with family activities, youth races, sports exhibitions, food trails, and cultural programs. The runner would become only one part of the consumer economy. Their family might stay in a hotel, their friends eat in restaurants, and spectators visit attractions. That is the difference between an event economy and an events economy. The former counts what happens inside the venue. The latter asks what happens to the city because the event is there.
This matters as Hong Kong seeks to strengthen its tourism proposition. Visitor arrivals reached about 26.7 million in the first half of this year, up 13 percent year-on-year, with long-haul markets such as France, Canada, and Australia also showing significant growth.
The challenge is not simply to bring in more people. It is to persuade them to stay longer and discover more.
For the coming five years, Hong Kong could make the ticket stub economy a practical policy experiment. A small number of major events could be designated as pilots, with their economic tails measured systematically and successful models expanded. The objective is not to subsidize every event or manufacture consumption. It is to remove the friction between an event and the rest of the city. It also connects policies too often discussed separately. Culture brings people in. Sport gives them a reason to participate. Tourism encourages them to explore. Retail and hospitality capture the spending. Transport connects the experience. The ticket is the common thread.
Hong Kong has already learned how to attract the crowd. Now it needs to learn how to keep the crowd moving. The most valuable visitor may not be the person who buys the ticket. It may be the person who turns one ticket into three restaurant meals, two hotel nights, a shopping trip, a museum visit, and a reason to come back. That is the ticket stub economy. For Hong Kong’s next five years, it could be more than a catchy phrase. It could be a practical way to turn events from isolated occasions into engines of citywide economic activity.
Hong Kong has spent years learning how to fill stadiums. Now it needs to learn how to fill the streets after the stadiums empty.
The author is chairman of the Asia MarTech Society and sits on the advisory boards of several professional organizations, including two universities.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
