Not-so-golden week looms for retailers

Hong Kong

IMAGINE a Christmas shopping season with closed stores and customers stranded because cabs are nowhere in sight.

For retailers of Fendi bags and Rolex watches in Hong Kong, that's the type of nightmare unfolding as pro-democracy protests wreak havoc during one of the busiest times of the year, the China National Day holidays known as Golden Week. Demonstrators are occupying shopping areas from Causeway Bay to Tsim Sha Tsui, disrupting transportation, shutting stores and testing the patience of Chinese tourists who accounted for 75 per cent of the city's 54 million visitors last year.