Lan Kwai Fong was once the area in Hong Kong most associated with the city’s nightlife and its expat community but it now serves a more mainland Chinese clientele.
For years, Anthony Yiu had an English-only menu for his two small bars in Hong Kong’s nightlife hub Lan Kwai Fong because most of his customers were expats, local professionals and foreign tourists. It wasn’t until this year that he decided to add a Chinese version to it.
“In the past, Lan Kwai Fong was full of expats and locals who were upper-middle class and had strong spending power,” says Yiu, 32, who’s been struggling to make a profit for months from his bars, Shots and Chord. “A lot of them left Hong Kong over the past few years during the social unrest and COVID. And those were our target customers. Now the visitors here are mainly from mainland China.”
Yiu’s experience shows the transformation that is taking place in Lan Kwai Fong, an area encompassing the eponymous sloping street and surrounding blocks in the Central business district. Once synonymous with Hong Kong nightlife and in particular the city’s expat community, the area’s business mix is now changing to reflect what is becoming an increasingly Chinese city.
As COVID-19 ravaged nightlife economies around the world, Lan Kwai Fong was no exception, and many legacy establishments shut down. Shopfronts that once saw revellers spilling out onto the streets even on weekdays are now quiet. Bars that drew crowds with Filipino cover bands and jello shots are giving way to Chinese restaurants.
“Bars and live music places for expats are struggling while Chongqing noodle shops are thriving,” says Allan Zeman, whose Lan Kwai Fong Group owns several buildings in the district. “It’s a different demographic that we’re getting used to.”
“Mainland Chinese players are rapidly penetrating the market across segments in Hong Kong’s consumer food service industry, especially with accelerating integration with the Greater Bay Area,” which refers to a cluster of southern Chinese cities including Hong Kong and Macau, says Prudence Lai, consultant at Euromonitor International.
The average Chinese tourist is much more frugal than before COVID-19. China’s consumer confidence has been weakening amid a property market crash and economic slowdown, and visitors to Hong Kong who might have previously shopped at luxury stores now pursue cheaper social-media-driven activities.
Yiu, who says he made on average about $HK10,000 in alcohol sales for each of his bars on a weekday evening in 2018, now averages about $HK100. Weekend income is about one-fifth of what he saw in 2018. To cater to the changing spending habits of mainland Chinese, he is lowering the prices of some of his drinks and rolling out offers such as free shots with certain purchases.
Yin Wong, who runs nightclub ROSÉ in Lan Kwai Fong, is also introducing cheaper drinks and cutting prices of existing products to appeal to Chinese customers. He’s also opened accounts on Chinese social media networks including the Instagram-like app Xiaohongshu, WeChat and Douyin.
“Nowadays you work 10 to 20 times harder than before,” says Wong, “but the return is just half of what you used to get.” https://www.afr.com/world/asia/hong-kong-s-expat-party-hub-transformed-by-chinese-influx-20250115-p5l4h1