You get the right to control a beach in Hong Kong and make as much money from it as possible. What would you charge for? Use of the drinking water fountain? Restrooms and changing rooms? Showers? BBQ pits? (All pre-installed using taxpayers’ money.) Tacky hamburger concessions (“No outside food allowed”)? Check between bathers’ toes when they leave and charge them HK$5 for each grain of sand they are taking away (“environmental protection fee)?
Director of Leisure and Cultural Services Manda Chan on Monday said the government is open to expanding a proposed pilot scheme which would involve the private sector managing certain public beaches.
Her remarks came after the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) invited businesses’ expression of interest in operating three public beaches – Ma Wan Tung Wan Beach in Tsuen Wan, Butterfly Beach in Tuen Mun and Big Wave Bay Beach in Southern District on Hong Kong Island.
Speaking on an RTHK programme, Chan said the three beaches have unique features and business potential to host commercial activities.
The idea seems to be to prevent overcrowding (otherwise known as Mainland-tourist overload). So there could also be a booking system, where you reserve a slot to visit the beach on an app (otherwise known as don’t bother, let’s do something else this Sunday.)
Despite possibly being expanded, it’s still only a proposed pilot scheme, so the whole visionary concept might go the way of waste-charging, bus seat belts and other initiatives imposed with patriots-only support rather than regard to public opinion. Or some property tycoon’s dimwit kid might bid HK$100 million to ‘monetize’ a 200-yard stretch of shore.
(Perhaps there is potential for private operators to monetize public spaces as non-nanny-state zones. The last time I went to a beach that charged admission, it was out in eastern Shenzhen. It seemed that, in return for payment, visitors could bring dogs, smoke, play music, let their kids pee-pee anywhere, etc. Maybe we could have sitting-out areas where, after paying admission, you can lie on a bench and kids can ride a tricycle. Brought to you by AnarchyParks Inc.)
This will do nothing to address over-tourism elsewhere in Hong Kong. In my own neighbourhood, I can think of half a dozen spots where Mainland tourists gather on the sidewalk in such numbers that anyone else passing by must walk in the street among traffic. If I were Emperor of the Universe, I would summon the Tourism Promotion bureaucrats and the Transport Department psychos to kneel before me and tell them to work out between themselves how to either reduce the number of people or increase the amount of space for pedestrians. You have one hour, or you lose your jobs.
the whole visionary concept might go the way of waste-charging, bus seat belts and other initiatives imposed with patriots-only support rather than regard to public opinion
Well, possibly not. The big difference is that there’s no money in those initiatives whereas monetizing beaches (especially when they are all converted to private enterprise) is a potential big pot of gold plus the so-called government cuts running costs and gets a hand-out too.
The problem: over tourism predominantly by mainland tourists following suggestions on Red Note which means huge numbers of visitors go to the same locations (even if they are shit)
The solution: charge everyone for going to the beach.
Genius.
Perhaps they can ask the people who ran very successful and popular barbecue pits on Shek O beach for decades to bid. You know, the ones the FEHD decided to chase out? Or maybe the people who run stalls and shops off Big Wave Bay already can do it?
A better idea would be to ‘commercialise’ the tourist coach parking at Repulse Bay. And Bauhinia Square while they’re at it. Stop the private operators profiting off public resources and you might start to thin the herd out. A bit.
Where I live the beaches belong to the People. Period. Access must be made available and if anyone that happens to live close to a beach tries to erect a barrier or some kind of gate, it WILL be dealt with either legally or extra legally (by pissed off, non richie rich locals).
It’s SO predictable that HK would even go the route of “considering” the privatization of public resources in this manner.
If managing HK beaches really was such a potential gold mine, surely the government would be best served managing them themselves.
After all, now they’ve trashed the economy by crippling all the restaurants and bars; getting the middle class to emigrate; and spending all their cash reserves on tear gas, secret police and pointless elections of pointless people to pointless legislatures, they could do with the extra cash, could they not?
If I was the operator, the first thing I’d do is charge for taking pictures of bikini ladies.
Re: (All pre-installed using taxpayers’ money.)
Why are we still forking out $32,000+++ to Tai Po DC Peggy Wong when her ‘despicable’ role in the Wong Fuk Court fire via a litany of undue pressure on residents and the stuffing of ballots boxes is a recurring feature of the investigation?
Without a property angle, it’ll never work.
Of course you cannot have more pedestrian space. The obvious thing to do is walking streets: deliveries in the wee hours, and otherwise half of island-line adjacent and Kowloon streets would be given over to pedestrians. As a good governance / urban planning matter, surely this has been obvious for decades? But before, Carrie Kam types didn’t know what an Octopus card was, and now… well now. People. Streets. … how to disassociate those words…
@DrivenOut
Yes to more pedestrian space, but combined with wholesale support for cycling, which is so well suited to our small-footprint city, it’s a crime that we aren’t oriented around it.
While cities like Taipei, Shenzhen and Paris have expanded their cycling take-up, to reduce congestion and pollution, and grow quality of life for everyone, our authorities are stuck in a 1970s orientation around motor vehicles.
Chinese Netizen says: Where I live the beaches belong to the People. Period. Access must be made available and if anyone that happens to live close to a beach tries to erect a barrier or some kind of gate, it WILL be dealt with either legally or extra legally (by pissed off, non richie rich locals).
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Meh. Were you not here during COVID when the beaches were barricaded and closed? Of course, you’d see about 100 people swimming and on the beaches from sunrise to 8 a.m. before the police showed up. After that, the beaches were deserted in spite of the fact that one of the best deterrents of COVID was to have plenty of Vitamin D (sunshine). But they discouraged being outdoors and told everyone to stay inside. Insane acts before implies that they won’t hesitate to pull a similar stunt in the future.
@HK-Cynic: No, unfortunately I didn’t get to enjoy HK during the height of COVID madness. A lot of what you mention also applied to where I was, where a lack of knowing what they were dealing with coupled with a lack of common sense guided government actions. We even had police patrolling parks and beaches here in order to fine individuals for choosing to get sunshine, exercise and fresh air as well.
“Law enforcement” is more about fundraising for municipalities and protecting cash cows than actual public safety or service.