Tourism Board Mulls New Ways To Promote HK

The Executive Director of Hong Kong Tourism Board, Dane Cheng, said on Sunday that the board was looking at new ways to promote the city even though large scale events have been cancelled due to the pandemic.

The board announced on Friday that the New Year's Eve fireworks display and the Chinese New Year parade would be scrapped, and there would be no Christmas tree installation in Statue Square in Central this year.

Speaking to reporters after a radio show, Cheng says the board is considering an "online and offline" event to usher in the Year of the Ox, with details to be announced later.

“Of course it’s a disappointment for us that we have to cancel the New Year countdown, but I think it’s the right thing to do. We have looked around the world, most of the cities have cancelled their major New Year’s countdown activities. And also this is not an appropriate time, given the social distancing as well as the whole sentiment. But as usual, we’ll be thinking of how we could celebrate the countdown in a different way. More details hopefully we can disclose later,” he said.

Both the New Year’s Eve fireworks display and the Chinese New Year parade have been cancelled for the second straight year. The New Year’s Eve celebrations were called off last year because of the anti-government protests, while the Chinese New Year parade was also cancelled when the epidemic hit Hong Kong earlier this year.

In the meantime, Cheng said the board would continue to promote the Hong Kong brand using a more innovative approach, such as through online events.

“We all know that unless the pandemic is under control, and the effective vaccine is available all around the world, it’d be very difficult for us to revive, for tourism, for tourists to come in to Hong Kong as well as for Hong Kong people to be tourists,” he said.

“The thing is that, like what we’ve done in the Wine and Dine Festival, we’re taking a very new approach, both offline and online, so that people could enjoy the event but also observe the social distancing rules. I think we have to think differently, to have a new model, a new way.”

He also said while now is not the right time to encourage people to go out, the board was already working with tour operators to see how they could relaunch local tours when the virus situation stabilises.