Travel Industry Ramps Up As Quota Bookings Begin

A tourism industry representative on Friday welcomed the government's gradual approach to the resumption of quarantine-free travel as people began signing up to make quarantine-free journeys.

Speaking on RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme, Fanny Yeung, executive director of the Travel Industry Council, said the sector's top priority for now was ramping up manpower and resources in the expectation that more visitors will arrive after the Lunar New Year break late in January.

"For this month, that will be up to the Chinese New Year holiday, most likely I don't think there will be a lot of visitors," she told RTHK's Ben Tse. "Most people crossing the boundary will be seeing friends or relatives, or some business transactions.

"The quota is just 60,000 per day so the proportion of visitors may be 20 percent at most and it won't be a group tour. For our group tour visitors, we will expect some time around early February to mid-February, around that timing.

"We will expect about ten tours a day, that is a few hundred, let's say 1,000 [tourists], per day."

Under the quota system announced on Thursday, Hong Kong residents must sign up online to use three land crossings at specific times. Online registration opened for 50,000 quota places per day. A further 10,000 places are available daily to go to the mainland by plane, ferry or a bus across the bridge to Zhuhai and Macau.

Mainland visitors can sign up to come to Hong Kong via a system operated by the Shenzhen authorities, with the same number of crossings available. The quota will not apply to Hong Kong residents returning to the SAR or mainland visitors to Hong Kong returning home.

Successful applicants receive a QR code that they have to show when crossing the border at the time reserved, along with a negative PCR test result.

Roundtable lawmaker Michael Tien said it was sensible to require travellers to take a PCR test, but he felt visitors should also be fully vaccinated.

"A key concern of mine is the fact that they do not require mainlanders coming to Hong Kong to be fully vaccinated," he told RTHK.

"And the fact that we don't have a vaccine pass in Hong Kong means they can go and dine at any restaurant, and if they do, unfortunately, get infected, there's a chance that they may end up going to our hospitals in Hong Kong for those who are unvaccinated.

"It would actually increase congestion in terms of the availability of beds in our public hospitals."