Christmas Day holidays (Dec. 25 to 27) have brought about much more passenger flows and business to the shopping centers, restaurants and some other retail sectors.

The Times Square, one of Hong Kong's leading shopping centers, has received about 160,000 customers Saturday, the Christmas Day, a record number in the past few years.

According to a spokeswoman from the Times Square, the holiday customers have stronger consumption desires and even restaurants in the shopping center have attracted "perfect" number of customers during the Christmas.

Hong Kong International Industrial Products Exhibition, an annual event that is being held in Victoria Park, also become one of the "must-go" spots for both Hong Kong citizens and tourists.

The exhibition has attracted over 1 million visitors since its opening on Dec. 11.

The exhibition, also receives Renminbi as entrance tickets, attracted more spending of visitors, for fast food, daily goods, seafood and jewelry.

A kind of abalone, which is sold at 680 HK dollars (US$87.18) for one piece usually, is sold at 380 HK dollars during the exhibition. A restaurant which has a booth at the exhibition sold out 200 pieces of abalone daily during the holidays.

3D-Gold Jewelry, a famous jewelry brand in Hong Kong, which increased 1 million HK dollars for a much bigger booth than that of last year, sees much more spending of its customers. The per capita spending of its customers to the booth is 600 HK dollars, up 50 percent over that of last year.

The 3D-Gold Jewelry's booth at Victoria Park received 30 percent more of customers Saturday and the company expected 30 percent to 40 percent more of trading volume during the exhibition period from Dec. 11 to Jan. 3.

An owner of a fashion shop in Causeway Bay said, the business volume in her shop is 50 percent up during the holidays than that of the usual period.

Her shop sells expensive European fashions and 80 percent of her customers are white-collars from the Chinese mainland. She said the Chinese mainland customers spend 5,000 to 7,000 HK dollars in her shop on an average.

Davinci, a shop sells jewelry pieces made in Italy, also received more customers than that of usual. A sales woman said the Chinese mainland tourists account for half of the shop's total customers and the per capita spending is about 2,000 HK dollars.

(Xinhua News Agency December 27, 2004)