Cross-border tourism : an empirical study of tourism into the Pearl River Delta

Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangdong Province in Mainland China have been promoting the Pearl River Delta area as a contiguous destination since 1993. This program has met with some success, in spite of significant political and bureaucratic obstacles. This article presents the results of an empirical study examining cross-border tourism from Hong Kong to either the then Portuguese enclave of Macau or to Guangdong Province in neighboring China. The study revealed that most cross-border tourism involves day trip forays into either Macau or Guangdong, with extending tours being rare. Further, there is little evidence that tourists regard the region as a contiguous destination. Instead, they appear to make a discrete choice to visit one destination or the other, but not both. Cross-border tourists exhibit significant differences in their travel patterns compared with other tourists, tending to stay longer in Hong Kong and to include more stops on their travel itineraries.