Ocean Park visitors up 30% during New Year holidays

Hong Kong's Ocean Park welcomed around 380,000 visitors during the Chinese New Year holidays from Feb. 3 to Feb. 13. This is an increase of 30 percent from a year ago, thanks to the new flagship theme zone "Aqua City" opened in late January.Chairman of the Ocean Park Allan Zeman said in a media luncheon Monday that visitors from Chinese mainland and overseas accounted for about 74 percent of the total tourists, while the number of local guests jumped over 70 percent from a year earlier.The Park has been maintaining the in-park capacity to about 10 percent below the maximum instantaneous in-park capacity of 36,300 to cope with the pressure of large groups of visitors during the busy festival holidays.Zeman said the Park expects to welcome the 100 millionth guest since inception within the next two weeks.In addition, the Park has witnessed its first-ever penguin birth on Dec. 31, 2010. It was the first penguin that was born in Hong Kong. The newly-fledged penguin will be living in the Park's planned Polar Adventure theme zone to help the public learn about the conservation messages related to the polar region.