[KatoeyLover69]

Report from Bangkok Post dated Tuesday 16 May 2006 :-

Tourists shun Hong Kong Disneyland

Hong Kong - Hong Kong's new US$3.5 billion Disneyland theme park is falling short of attendance targets and is less than a quarter full on some holiday days, a report claimed Tuesday.

Attendance at the first Disney park in China, which opened last September, has been consistently below 10,000 since the Lunar New Year holiday in January, the South China Morning Post reported.

During this month's week-long Labour Day holiday, there were less than 7,000 visitors on the first day and only slightly more in subsequent days, the newspaper claimed, quoting a theme park source.

The park has a capacity of around 30,000 people and a target of 5.6 million visitors in its first year, or more than 15,000 a day. Disney has repeatedly refused to release detailed attendance figures.

Occupancy rates at the park's two hotels, according to another source quoted by the news paper, have been running at between 30 and 60 per cent compared to around 80 per cent for hotels downtown.

Disney refused to confirm or deny either the attendance figures or the hotel occupancy rates Tuesday. "It is our company policy not to disclose or discuss our attendance numbers or hotel occupancy rates whether they are high or low or average," a spokeswoman told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"Seasonality plays a big part in all of our theme parks so we look at the total picture and not a single day or week. People who visit the park are telling us that it is a great experience," she said.

"Our guest surveys found that more than 80 per cent of our guests rated their experience as excellent, very good and good and over 50 per cent said they would definitely or very likely make another visit to Hong Kong Disneyland."

The Disney theme park, paid for largely by the Hong Kong government, has been dogged by controversy since its opening, with accusations that it is short on attractions and that ticket prices are too high.
--- KatoeyNewsNetwork