The Hong Kong Tourism Board appointed Dubai-based Katch International to handle integrated PR, social, branding, and experiential communications across the Middle East, the agency confirmed this week. The move arrives three weeks after HKTB launched 'Only in Hong Kong,' a global brand refresh designed to shift positioning from visual familiarity to sensory experience—what the board calls a city to be "felt" rather than seen.
Katch inherits a market where GCC nationals spent an estimated $2.8 billion on Hong Kong travel in 2023, according to HKTB's annual visitor expenditure data, with average per-trip spend from UAE and Saudi visitors running 42 percent above the regional mean. The Middle East office appointment follows HKTB's European agency consolidation in Q4 2024 and its North American social retender in January, signaling a coordinated global activation layer beneath the new brand architecture. Katch's remit includes campaign localization, influencer partnerships, media relations, and on-ground event production across the six GCC states.
The timing reflects structural pressure. Hong Kong logged 26.1 million visitor arrivals in 2024, still 31 percent below 2018's 65.1 million pre-pandemic benchmark, per Immigration Department figures released January 15. Mainland China remains the dominant source market at 78 percent of total arrivals, but growth there has plateaued at +4 percent year-over-year since October. HKTB is now hunting high-yield segments: GCC travelers, who skew toward luxury retail, five-star hospitality, and Michelin dining, represent less than 2 percent of total arrivals but contribute nearly 7 percent of total visitor spending. The 'Only in Hong Kong' platform—centered on bespoke itineraries, neighborhood storytelling, and cultural immersion over skyline imagery—directly targets allocation decisions made by family offices, private aviation brokers, and ultra-high-net-worth travel planners.
Katch's activation model matters for operators. The agency runs a 34-person Dubai studio with embedded content production, meaning faster turnaround on localized assets for hotel partners, retail landlords, and F&B groups seeking co-marketing lift. HKTB's 2024 marketing budget sat at HK$580 million ($74.3 million), with roughly 18 percent earmarked for Middle East and South Asia combined, according to budget documents tabled in LegCo last March. Expect Katch to channel a portion toward paid influencer programs—HKTB ran 12 such campaigns in 2024, generating 680 million impressions globally—and experiential pop-ups in Dubai, Riyadh, and potentially Doha, mirroring the Tokyo and Seoul activations HKTB staged in Q1 2025.
Watch three levers. First, whether HKTB green-lights a dedicated GCC charter subsidy or co-op with Cathay Pacific, which resumed daily Dubai service in November after a two-year suspension. Second, Katch's ability to secure luxury-hotel inventory commitments—Rosewood, Mandarin Oriental, and The Peninsula all rely on HKTB's global sales engine for group bookings. Third, localization speed: GCC campaigns require halal dining guides, prayer-facility mapping, and culturally adapted imagery, infrastructure HKTB hasn't consistently published since 2019. Katch's contract runs through December 2026, with a 12-month extension option.
The GCC now represents Hong Kong's fastest-growing long-haul segment outside North Asia, up 86 percent in arrivals from 2023 to 2024. That growth rate, paired with HKTB's $74 million global spend, positions Katch's activation as a live test case for whether rebrand capital can convert high-net-worth travelers faster than skyline advertising ever did.
The takeaway
HKTB's Katch appointment targets GCC's **$2.8 billion** Hong Kong spend via localized luxury-segment activation beneath new 'Only in Hong Kong' global platform.
Want the 60-second program for your specific event?
Enter your event and email — we build it and send the branded proposal before lunch. No obligation.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori Press · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.