Hong Kong is expected to remain Asia's favorite destination for tourist shopping in coming years while mainland Chinese will be driving the region's travel retail boom, survey results showed Thursday.

A survey of four of Asia's leading destinations -- Bangkok, Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore -- was commissioned by payments giant MasterCard International. It projected tourist shopping trends from 2006 to 2011.

The total amount that tourists spend on shopping will grow at 8 percent a year from $14 billion in 2006 to at least $20 billion in 2011, when Hong Kong is forecast to account for $11 billion in spending.

MasterCard's economic advisor, Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, said the results of the study showed a vibrant retail sector was crucial for any Asian country wanting to woo the tourist dollar.

"The economic and business benefits of tourism are huge for Asia Pacific, impacting on the retail sector directly," Hedrick-Wong said.

"Competing for tourist arrivals will certainly intensify in Asia Pacific and a mutually beneficial partnership between the travel industry and the retail industry could play an important role in this regard."

By 2011, Hong Kong would be followed by Bangkok with $3.5 billion in tourist shopping revenues, Seoul with $3.1 billion and Singapore with $2.9 billion.

Driving the tourists' shopping spree will be Chinese visitors with more than 24 million of them expected to descend on the four cities by 2011 if current growth trends are sustained, the study said.

By contrast, Japanese tourists who used to dominate tourist shopping in some Asian cities are expected to increase marginally to 5.7 million by 2011.

"This trend will have implications for evolving the relationship between visitor arrivals and their shopping experience," MasterCard said.

(CNTA.com May 27, 2004)