A HAPPY NEW TOURIST AREA FOR HONG KONG? WHY NOT?

What no one knew at the time, including the person I was living with at the time was an idea racing through my head when being shown the beer garden at Happy Valley racecourse and which I turned into the Happy Wednesday brand for the Hong Kong Jockey Club. 

Some things are best kept in one’s hip pocket and being taught when in advertising that timing is everything.

With the Hong Kong I once knew and where I met and married the American Wrangler girl and our daughter was born and went to the French International School, the city is now looking a little lost with bandaids used to hide the pockmarks while it plod along with its most, and maybe only attraction being horse racing.

With one-time popular Hong Kong areas like Lan Kwai Fong, Wanchai, Soho and Sheung Wan not having recovered from when Hong Kong was in lockdown mode, and tourist attractions like Ocean Park and Disneyland looking old and withered, the city desperately needs something that appears new and which is NOT going to be something else requiring another 5-10 year plan.

Hong Kong is seemingly drowning in way too many of these long term plans and one has to wonder if they will ever even see the light of day, and if and when they finally do, how might the world have changed?

Would ideas hatched today even be relevant in three years, let alone five years or a decade?

Going back to the time when I was getting bored looking after the Happy Wednesday brand, I had my sights set on being involved with Gorillaz from the creative team of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, who are always busy being game changers. Always.

Having said this, fermenting at the back of my mind was also looking at the Happy Valley area and other places within close proximity being a new “combo” product for Hong Kong with a hip new name- I have it and it’s registered- and positioned as being something exciting and bringing everything together as a team as opposed to going it alone.

Here was something that could offer Hong Kong and truly international tourists something attractive through good, creative marketing built around the right positioning- something like, “Because one size doesn’t fit all” and which is positioned as being something that’s a one-stop vive le difference new product!

Early this week, I looked at everything within walking distance around Happy Valley, Wanchai and Central and see all this everything that is currently scattered being a specially named and “zoned” area comprising hotels and their various outlets, restaurants, bars, retail outlets etc and Tai Kwun plus everything else that can come together to create a convenient one stop meeting place for a new and younger community.

THIS is what I was hoping to work on with Simon Fuller, pictured below in Hong Kong with my daughter Taryn, when introducing him to the CEO of the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Though the timing wasn’t right, I can still see it working for Hong Kong and with franchise opportunities for elsewhere in the region.