Tourist board offers glum holiday forecast
The Tourism Board has predicted that only about 200,000 mainland residents will spend their National Day holidays in Hong Kong.
This is despite the fact that a record 946,000 mainland residents visited the special administrative region last month - 43 per cent up on the same time last year.
The forecast comes after tour agencies in Hong Kong claimed that the number of mainland tours scheduled to come to the city had fallen by 10 to 30 per cent this year, and some three-star hotels said that only 60 per cent of rooms had been booked so far.
The decline has been blamed on the relaxation of visa rules for individual travellers, which has allowed greater flexibility for tourists to visit the special administrative region at any time.
The Tourism Board said yesterday that 200,000 visitors were expected over the week-long holiday, starting today, and that the overall hotel occupancy rate would reach 80 per cent - similar to last year.
Responding to criticism that mainland tourists had been deterred by overpriced hotels and tours, Tourism Board executive director Clara Chong Ming-wah said she hoped the hotel sector would have a broader vision to 'compete not on price but on quality'.
To cope with the influx, the Immigration Department will open all counters at land border checkpoints from today. The government has also increased the quota of cross-border buses allowed at the Sha Tau Kok, Man Kam To and Lok Ma Chau crossings to divert some of the flow from the congested Lowu checkpoint.
The Immigration Department has advised people travelling across the border that the best time to use the checkpoints is outside the peak hours of 11am and 2pm.
The Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation will increase train services to and from Lowu, and the cross-border shuttle bus service at Lok Ma Chau will be stepped up.
In the event of serious traffic congestion, the Transport Department will suspend all green minibus and franchised bus routes between Lok Ma Chau and other areas to ensure the smooth operation of cross-border buses.
Parking spaces for tourist coaches have been allocated on Stubbs Road, the old Jordan Ferry Pier and Canton Road. The Citybus depot near Ocean Park will also become a temporary parking facility.
