About U Magazine

U Magazine

U Magazine is a Chinese-language travel and lifestyle weekly published in Hong Kong by Hong Kong Economic Times Holdings, the group behind the Hong Kong Economic Times financial daily. Launched in December 2005, it grew from a new entrant in Hong Kong's crowded weekly market into what industry surveys repeatedly named the city's favourite lifestyle magazine, before its print edition ended in August 2023 as part of its parent group's digital transformation, and its remaining online operation was reported to be winding down in 2024 after a nineteen-year run. Its history traces, in miniature, the rise and contraction of Hong Kong's glossy weekly era.

Launch and ownership

U Magazine was launched in December 2005 by Hong Kong Economic Times Holdings, which trade publications describe as its owner throughout its life. The parent group, listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange in August 2005, built its business around the Hong Kong Economic Times newspaper, founded in 1988, and diversified into a portfolio of magazines and digital services that included the financial weekly iMoney, the technology title e-zone and the free newspaper Sky Post. U Magazine was the group's lifestyle flagship: a paid weekly aimed not at investors but at Hongkongers planning their leisure time. Its Chinese name, U Weekly, signalled a casual, reader-centred brand, and its launch came at a moment when outbound travel from Hong Kong was expanding and a weekly that could package destinations, restaurants and weekend activities in one purchase found a ready audience.

The three-book format

The magazine's best-known feature was its structure. Rather than a single volume, U Magazine was issued in three separate books under three brands: Travel, Food and Life+Weekend. The Travel book carried the latest travel information, destination reporting and on-location interviews. The Food book functioned as a comprehensive dining guide, pointing readers to new restaurants in Hong Kong. Life+Weekend set out a guide to the weekend's activities for readers staying in the city. Industry coverage of the magazine consistently highlighted this three-brand architecture as the core of its appeal: a single weekly purchase served travellers, food lovers and weekend planners at once. The format also suited advertisers in each sector, and it gave the title a physical presence on newsstands that competitors found hard to match.

Content and readership

Within its books, U Magazine offered columns, practical information and guides rather than long-form journalism. Its travel coverage ranged across destinations at home and abroad, featuring promotions and suggested itineraries, while its food pages tracked Hong Kong's fast-changing restaurant scene. The magazine published every Friday in its mature years, timed for weekend planning. Its readers were the urban Hongkongers whose short-break travel to Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Southeast Asia, and whose appetite for new dining experiences, defined the city's consumer culture in the 2000s and 2010s. The title's social media following eventually exceeded two million followers, with about 1.7 million likes recorded by trade press checks, a scale that reflected how thoroughly the brand had migrated into readers' daily feeds even while print continued.

Recognition in the industry

U Magazine's standing was repeatedly confirmed by the Hong Kong media industry's own benchmarking. In Marketing magazine's annual Media Report surveys of advertisers and marketers, U Magazine was named the number one lifestyle magazine, described as a local favourite that continued to be Hongkongers' magazine of choice. In the 2014 survey it again took gold in the local travel category, ahead of its long-standing rival Weekend Weekly. Trade coverage noted that over the years the magazine accumulated multiple honours for its work. Such rankings mattered commercially: they were compiled from the preferences of the advertisers who bought pages in Hong Kong magazines, and U Magazine's repeated first place signalled to the market that its combination of travel, food and weekend content delivered an audience that brands wanted to reach.

Place within the HKET group

Inside Hong Kong Economic Times Holdings, U Magazine sat within the printed media segment alongside the flagship daily, iMoney and Sky Post, while the group also operated recruitment, financial information and lifestyle portal businesses, including the U Lifestyle platform. The magazine benefited from the group's printing, distribution and advertising infrastructure, and its brand extended into digital lifestyle services that carried the U name beyond the printed page. That group backing distinguished it from independent titles: when the economics of Hong Kong print deteriorated, U Magazine's fate was decided as part of a listed company's portfolio strategy rather than by a standalone publisher, and its final years were shaped by the group's stated pivot toward digital transformation.

The end of print in 2023

In 2023 U Magazine announced, through its Instagram and Facebook accounts, that it would cut its print version in response to market developments and the digital transformation of the group. The final print version appeared on 31 August 2023, and print ceased from September. The magazine stated that suspending print was a tough decision, but that all its digital platforms would continue to operate as usual and be updated regularly. The announcement placed U Magazine within a wider pattern that trade press documented across Hong Kong, where a succession of local publications had ceased operating or dropped their print editions in the preceding years as advertising and readership moved online and print costs rose.

Reported online closure in 2024

Around six months after the print closure, in June 2024, Hong Kong media reported that U Magazine would also end its online version. According to reporting carried by The Standard and local outlet ReNews, the company held an internal meeting on 18 June at which management described a restructuring; the magazine's deputy editor, however, disputed that account on social media, stating that there would be no team restructuring and that all 32 employees of U Magazine would be laid off. Trade press described the development as marking the end of an era for the nineteen-year publication. The conflicting accounts of the meeting were themselves a sign of how abruptly the title's story closed: a magazine launched in 2005 that had defined its category ended first as a print product and then, reportedly, as a digital one.

Competition and market context

U Magazine's career unfolded against intense competition in Hong Kong travel and leisure publishing. Its closest rival, Weekend Weekly, founded in 1999 by what became New Media Group, contested the same travel, dining and leisure readership, and the two titles traded the top positions in industry surveys for years, with U Magazine generally ahead in the 2010s. The broader market was unforgiving: Hong Kong's magazine sector contracted steadily under digital pressure, groups merged titles and cut staff, and even category leaders lost their print editions. U Magazine outlasted many competitors, surviving in print until 2023, but its trajectory from launch, through category leadership, to print closure and reported digital shutdown mirrors the arc of Hong Kong's weekly magazine industry as a whole.

Legacy

U Magazine's legacy rests on the formula it perfected: three specialised books in one weekly package, practical and upbeat guidance on travel, food and weekends, and a brand that Hong Kong readers and advertisers alike ranked first in its category for much of its life. For eighteen years in print it chronicled how Hongkongers travelled and ate, from the expansion of short-haul Asian tourism to the city's ever-renewing restaurant scene. Its large social following testified that the brand's usefulness survived the page. Although both its print and, reportedly, its online editions have now ceased, U Magazine remains a reference point in accounts of Hong Kong media for how a well-positioned weekly could dominate a lifestyle niche, and for how completely the economics that sustained it disappeared.