Businesspeople Call For Own Shenzhen Hotel Quota

Shenzhen authorities are being urged to reserve hundreds of quarantine rooms each day for businesspeople from Hong Kong.

Two-thousand new quarantine places for travellers from Hong Kong are currently being provided each day through a ballot system.

But a hundred Hong Kong business owners and 18 DAB lawmakers have signed a petition to the Shenzhen government calling for another 500 rooms to be made available each day, solely for businesspeople.

Kennedy Wong, a DAB lawmaker representing the import and export sector, says he thinks only around ten percent of people applying through the ballot system manage to secure a quarantine room on any given day.

He said this has created uncertainty for over 200,000 Hong Kong-invested enterprises in Guangdong.

“There is a lot of uncertainty on when they can actually cross the border. So they cannot make appointments to see their customers, their partners and maybe officials and so on,” he said.

Wong said accounting firms are greatly affected by the new balloting policy.

“They need to audit a lot of companies… they need to send a team. With the balloting system, a few people can try at the same time, but maybe only one or none get approved,” he explained.

“So, how do you overcome those hurdles to ensure that Hong Kong will not get isolated and be further integrated into the GBA and also the whole country?”

“This balloting is just not workable for a business to run their operations in the Greater Bay Area, in mainland China.”

Wong said he is not worried that businesspeople would abuse business quotas for other purposes, as they would probably have to provide information on their companies and the purpose of their trips.