Visitors Trickle into Hong Kong

Hong Kong Tourism Board is promoting the city again

While people are happy to see "0+0" or no restrictions when coming into Hong Kong -- provided you test negative upon arrival -- many are still leery of traveling to the city because of the other tests they need to do in the following days.

Even though the Hong Kong Tourism Board will be heavily promoting the city with its "Hello! Hong Kong" campaign, travel agencies are reporting prospective visitors are concerned about having to do the testing requirements.

Arrival numbers are still sluggish

"As long as there is the PCR and antigen [tests], it is kind of disheartening because [tourists] will always be afraid that if they have a positive result, they'll just be staying in the hotel" said Dolly Santos, president of Manila-based Golden Sky Travel and Tours.

Nevertheless, the tourism board is targeting Southeast Asian visitors. These short-haul flights account for 14,368 of the 80,524 travellers who visited Hong Kong in October, while 47,607 came from the mainland.

In November the number of visitors was 113,763, a 41 percent increase from the month previous. In 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic, the number was 55.91 million.

But even if the tourism board tries to entice prospective travellers with incentives, there aren't necessarily enough planes to carry all these visitors, which is why ticket prices are high at the moment.

Ricky Tse Kam-ting, vice-chairman of the Travel Industry Council expects a growing number of the visitors will be business travellers, as for them the current situation is far better than what was in place before, and could only loosen further eventually.

Lo wants people to keep using the LHS app

He estimates that of the 80,000 travellers who came last month, about half were in Hong Kong for business, and the number could double to 80,000 by January.

So have people gleefully deleted the Leave Home Safe app from their phones in the last few days?

Secretary for Health Dr Lo Chung-mau is begging people not to.

He said people still need to show their vaccination record which is stored in the app, though they could also use the eHealth and iAM Smart app, though they sound just as pathetic as the Leave Home Safe app...