Travel Bubbles Hard To Arrange: Tourism Professor

A tourism professor says opening up travel bubbles with other countries won't happen quickly and will be very difficult to arrange. The government has said it is in discussions with 11 countries on the topic, including Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Germany and France.

Professor Brian King from the Polytechnic University's school of hotel and tourism management says travel bubbles in the Baltic region and the European Union have had mixed success. He told RTHK the government should focus more on Macau and the Greater Bay Area, as tourism will probably restart closer to home.

"The industry is on its knees at the moment. It's 99 percent down. We have 30 million outbound visitors from Hong Kong last year - trips - so I guess there's a desire by the government to send some positive news about the future," he said.

"But obviously it's going to be very hard to sort out all the bureaucratic and other political concerns for each of these countries."

King described the move as a "bit of a wish list at this stage".