Richest Hong Kong Family Asks Government to Help City Hotels

(Bloomberg) -- A member of the wealthiest family in Hong Kong has called on the government to help the city’s hotels as the economy sags under months-long pro-democracy protests.

“We strongly urge the government to help the hotel industry,” Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd. Executive Director Adam Kwok said in a rare public address Friday. “We really need it.”

Kwok was speaking at the media launch for a new Sun Hung Kai property, Alva Hotel by Royal. He said hotel revenue for the company as a group had fallen by as much as 40% in November and December due to the unrest. This half, hotel revenue is forecast to be down around 30%.

At $38 billion, the Kwok family is Hong Kong’s wealthiest clan, according to a Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranking of Asia’s richest families. Their empire is also among the most exposed to the city’s anti-government protests, which have been fueled in part by anger over a widening wealth gap and the outsized political influence of property tycoons.

Read more: Hong Kong’s Richest Family Has the Most to Lose as Protests Rage

The unrest has left Hong Kong’s economy on the verge of its first annual contraction in a decade and caused tourism to dry up. Arrivals fell 44% in October compared with the same month of 2018, and the hotel occupancy rate averaged 68%. Retail sales have also plunged.

Kwok said authorities should refer to the stimulus policies employed during the 2003 SARS epidemic.

Asked why Sun Hung Kai was going ahead with the new hotel opening, he said the property had been in the pipeline for a long time. Total investment for Alva Hotel by Royal is around HK$2.8 billion ($359 million).

“We are in a difficult time but we give our full heart to operate,” Kwok said. “With this hotel, we are offering good quality at a very affordable price. People will come.”

Sun Hung Kai, Hong Kong’s biggest developer, isn’t forcing staff to take unpaid leave, or laying employees off, Kwok said.

“Hong Kong and mainland China will continue to be our focus of investment,” he said. “I’m confident about the future of Hong Kong. People will come back.”

Kwok is one of the next-in-line heirs for Sun Hung Kai. His grandfather Kwok Tak-seng, a grocery wholesaler from Guangdong, immigrated to Hong Kong after the war and co-founded the property developer in 1963. The patriarch’s three sons, Raymond, Walter, and Thomas, ran the family business after he passed away.

Sun Hung Kai’s shares slipped 1.1% on Monday, paring this year’s gain to 4.8%.

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.