Tourists feed penguins at Ocean Park. [Photo by Xu Lin/China Daily]

Northern China is one of the park's most important markets, chief executive Tom Mehrmann says.

Over a million tourists from the region visited last year. That accounted for over 30 percent of tourists from the Chinese mainland.

So Ocean Park Hong Kong is offering winter discounts to coax northern China's snowbirds.

Indeed, the Christmas season harks the citywide start of discounts at attractions and shopping malls.

The Hong Kong Tourism Board's executive director, Anthony Lau, says Hong Kong will spend HK$21 million ($3.3 million) to lure tourists, especially from the Chinese mainland this season. That's more than double last year's amount.

Nearly 40 million mainland residents visited Hong Kong from January to October, about the same as the previous year.