A
Look into the History of Cyber Cafes
When
the cyber cafe business was first started, it was intended to be a coffee
shop that provides access to the Internet as a means of entertainment. Today,
it has proliferated to become a growing industry worldwide and varieties of
cyber cafes emerged.
Cyber
Cafe in Hong Kong
The
first cyber cafe in Hong Kong was opened in 1992 in the brand name: Pacific Coffee. Nowadays, there
are two main types of cyber cafes in Hong Kong, one operating in the mode
of a coffee house and the other in the form of a network game center which
is widely known among teenagers as 網吧.
Type
1: Coffee Shop
This
type of cyber cafe focuses on selling coffee and pastries, with the provision
of access to the Internet functioning as a complement to serving coffee. This
type of cyber cafe usually only houses a few computer (~ 2-6), and they are
most often used for reading e-magazines and checking email
The
‘coffee shop’ cyber cafe tries to put up an image that it is a place for relaxation
and for hanging out with friends. The business is targeted at the middle to
upper class customers and to the ‘white collars’. In the light of this business
strategy, cyber cafes of this type are usually found in commercial areas such
as Central, Causeway Bay, Admiralty and Tsim Sha
Tsui.
A
good example of cyber cafe of this type will be the Pacific Coffee which is
the first of its kind in Hong Kong. The Pacific Coffee was first founded in
Hong Kong in 1992, at the Bank of America Tower in Central.
Type
2: Network Game Centre
Unlike
the Pacific Coffee, this type of cyber cafe focuses on the provision of computers
for playing on-line games rather than coffee and pastries. Kinds of food and
beverage sold here vary from shop to shop, and they are just a complement
to on-line games. As its name implies, the major use of computers in this
type of cyber cafe is for accessing and playing on-line games. The majority
of its customers belong to the lower to middle class, and are usually young
people. Therefore, this kind of cyber cafes is often located in places where
teenagers like to hang out: Mongkok, Tsim Sha
Tsui, Kwun Tong, etc.