HK people spending on Mainland travel up 8.5%

Hong Kong residents' arrivals in the Chinese mainland totaled 70.6 million last year, and their spending also rose to 31.8 billion HK dollars (4.09 billion U.S. dollars), up 8.5 percent on 2008, the Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong said Tuesday.

Of all the arrivals, 31 percent were on business travel and 69 percent personal. For personal trips, 57 percent were to Shenzhen, 37 percent to other places in Guangdong and the remainder for elsewhere on the mainland.

The average spending per person for personal travel was about 650 HK dollars. For personal overnight trips, each person spent about 880 HK dollars on average while for same-day trips, each people spent about 300 HK dollars.