Youth and hotel ‘love for hours’ in Hong Kong

Not far from Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor, when dawn was barely dawn, two anxious and nervous-looking college students stood outside the old commercial building with bright neon signs.

After two weeks of dating, Waddy, 20, and Moomoo, 23, found that they didn’t want to say goodbye after talking all night until early in the morning.

Like most Hong Kong youth, they both live with their parents, so talking at home is not an ideal option if they want to spend time alone.

His solution was to find one of Hong Kong’s love hotels by the hour.

As a model that is quite popular in Japan, hourly hotels began to appear in Hong Kong in the 1960s.

According to David Leung, founder and current president of the Hong Kong Accommodation Association, there are around 300 love hotels ranging from fairly luxurious to discreet and elegant in the city.

And in one of the most densely populated cities in the world, these hotels offer something impossible in Hong Kong: private spaces at affordable prices.

Ms. Cheng, 60, has run her love hotel for more than 20 years.

His 18-room guesthouse is located in Mongkok, the busiest shopping area for the locals.

Lack of private space has long been a problem for many, he said. “Some are even married couples who want a little privacy on the weekends because they have too much space at home,” says Ms. Cheng.

Although the traditional love hotel is not a new phenomenon in Hong Kong, but among the younger generation, this model has become popular for reasons not only because of passion.

Recently, a new series of hourly hotels with self check-in methods has started to appear.

With online check-in, advance reservations, and in-room TV or video game services, this model appeals to young couples who want to have fun and private time. .

After arriving at a love hotel for hours for the first time, Waddy and Moomoo started using the service once or twice a week, sometimes three times a week, so they started comparing. hourly love hotel prices and traditional social media hotels.

“So far, we have reviewed more than 90 hotels in the city,” adds Moomoo. Currently, his personal page has more than 20,000 followers.

The popularity of their reviews is perhaps not surprising.

According to government data in 2019, 9 out of 10 young people aged 15 to 24 and 6 out of 10 Hong Kong people aged 25 to 34 live in the same house with their parents.

Young people complain about the lack of space in the city, which ranks as the most expensive real estate market of the 309 metropolitan areas in eight countries.

With the median monthly income of these age groups ranging from HK $ 13,000 (US $ 1,677) to HK $ 19,300 (US $ 2,490), the city’s younger generation loses shares. the new decade to earn enough money to cover your own living space.

“We wanted to buy an apartment, but it was difficult,” Moomoo said. “Real estate prices are too high. We will still have to live with the parents. After you have saved enough money to buy a house, you still have to continue to pay off your bank loan to buy a house for many years to come again.”

Being intimate with your partner at home, where only a thin wall separates partners from their parents, is a concern for most younger generations.

A survey by a local NGO on Sticky-Rice sex education in 2018 found that more than 70% of Hong Kong people are miserable about having to find a place to have sex, and most of them go to love hotels. per hour, up to five times a month.

Dr. Susanne Choi, a sociology professor at Hong Kong’s Zhongzheng University specializing in gender, family and sex, said city residents “have no choice” but to visit love hotels. .

“Real estate prices in Hong Kong are very high. In other countries where rents and property prices are lower, people get used to living separately instead of living with their parents, and that’s a sign that shows that they have grown up, “said Choi.

In a city of more than 7.5 million people, traditional love hotels by the hour don’t always have rooms available.

It’s often difficult for young couples to come here in secret, says Jensen Tse, owner of a love hotel who operates a millennial self-check-in approach.

“Some traditional love hotels by the hour charge arbitrarily. And in some cases, you have to queue for an hour, which is even more embarrassing if you meet an acquaintance here,” said Tse. said the person who started the Mansion G business in a busy Hong Kong business district with some friends from college in 2018 after graduating from hotel management.

Many love hotel customers who operate with self check-in often book online for a flat fee.

Mansion G customers, 90% of them under the age of 30, often find the service on digital platforms and send messages directly through social media. They make the payment online before receiving the code to enter the hotel.

One of the main attractions of hotels that operate through self-check-in is that guests do not have to interact directly with others during their stay.

At Fortress Hill No. 7, a self-check-in love hotel in the city, Owner Yee sits from home using his phone to change the lock code for each room.

For Hong Kong couple Wayne, 26, and Grace, 27, finding privacy while living with Wayne’s parents has been difficult.

“We couldn’t make any noise during sex, because we live with our parents in a fairly narrow space. In love hotels, you can hear the noise from the other rooms, but I don’t know who they are, so it’s less embarrassing” Wayne said.

They both prefer to go to self-check-in love hotels as they are often owned and run by young people who know the demographics and know that this is not just a need for sex.

Usually what they offer is simply a place for couples to spend time together in private.

“Utilities include Netflix or in-room video games so couples can have fun together. If we go to traditional love hotels, we can only watch Netflix on our phones.” These hotels offer home privacy for a couple, ”adds Wayne.

Waddy and Moomoo see a similar demand from people contacting them through their Instagram review page.

“These people text us directly, often asking if the hotels we recommend are equipped with kitchens or bathrooms, as opposed to the previous generation, who our generation wanted to spend time with. Spending quality together,” Waddy said. “Sometimes we just want to cook together, because eating out every date is expensive.”

At Ms. Cheng’s traditional hourly love hotel, some clients in their 20s also reserve a room just to spend time alone without having sex.

During the corona virus outbreak in February and March of this year, the premium self-check-in love hotel Up-otel suffered a drop in reservation rates; there are days when only 3 rooms are occupied in the entire 25-story hotel building.

Leung of the Hong Kong Guest House Association also said the virus took about 70% of the usual business of love hotels by the hour.

In the third wave to hit the city, Cheng said his business has lost at least 80% of its customers.

He added that they may have to consider layoffs and even close two-thirds of their businesses to survive. She urged the government to provide more subsidies to the motel industry, which has been hit by the shutdown of global tourism due to the pandemic.

In late September 2020, Hong Kong was nearing the end of the third wave of local infections, prompting the city to take the strictest social distancing measures.

The city has been praised for its containment efforts, as the public became aware of public health and the wearing of masks after the 2013 SARS outbreak. Citizens began wearing masks in the area. months before WHO recommended it.

However, for self-check-in love hotels like Mansion G and Fortress Hill No. 7, room sales to locals soared during the outbreak.

Fortress Hill No. 7 founder Yee said that after there were virtually no customers in January, the business was back in business in February and March, and they began receiving 10 customers a day, double what they usually receive.

The third wave doesn’t affect your income, because students and office workers still get ready to get together to have an intimate moment together.

With a ban on dining at the restaurant, Tse says he actually has more customers, with half of them booking just to have space to enjoy food together.

Even without a global pandemic that worries people, the need to use love hotels clearly shows a serious lack of private spaces to live in Hong Kong.

But the fact that people are willing to spend their hard-earned money in tight spaces in those hotels also shows how creative Hong Kong people are in adapting to their surroundings.