Are we preserving the Hong Kong tourists come here for?

Feel strongly about these letters, or any other aspects of the news? Share your views by emailing us your Letter to the Editor at letters@scmp.com or filling in this Google form . Submissions should not exceed 400 words. The Tourism Board's new ' Only in Hong Kong ' campaign gets something right. Rather than leaning on mega-events and headline attractions, it turns its attention to Hong Kong experiences that are authentic and distinctive: tram rides, neighbourhood streets, dai pai dong, wet markets and scenes that visitors are more likely to remember long after they leave. That approach reflects how travel is changing. Increasingly, people are looking for a sense of place rather than another skyline to photograph. What stays with them is often not a landmark but the atmosphere around it. If Hong Kong wants to market itself through feeling and experience, it needs to preserve more of the things that create that feeling in the first place. The reaction to the filming of Highlander on Peel Street was a good reminder. The production recreated a Hong Kong streetscape with neon signs and hawker stalls, drawing hundreds of onlookers. While Henry Cavill helped attract the crowds, the fascination with the setting was hard to miss. Part of the appeal was the familiarity of seeing a streetscape that felt unmistakably Hong Kong, even though it had been reconstructed for a Hollywood production. None of this is an argument against development. Hong Kong should continue to build public spaces and neighbourhoods, but another polished mall, however impressive, is unlikely to be what visitors remember most. What gives the city its identity is often less spectacular: the layers of old and new, formal and informal, polished and improvised that have accumulated across its districts. Neon is perhaps the greatest example. It remains one of the visual signatures of Hong Kong in films and tourism advertisements, even though far less of it survives in the streets. Where modern safety standards can be met, more old signs should be retained and restored, while new neon should not just be confined to museums. The same principle should apply more broadly to wet markets, dai pai dong, hawker stalls and the everyday street life that gives neighbourhoods their identity. That is the opportunity that should be created by 'Only in Hong Kong'. If the campaign is right that what makes a destination memorable is how it feels, the city should apply that same thinking beyond advertising and make sure the character it sells to the world can still be found in its streets.