Hong Kong halts all tours to Thailand in wake of coup

All group tours from Hong Kong to Thailand will be cancelled from tomorrow in the wake of the coup that triggered a 'red travel alert' in the city, the Travel Industry Council announced today.

A total of 70 groups with 1,300 people would be affected, said Joseph Tung Yao-chung, the council's exective director.

Six of eight groups scheduled to set off today also decided to cancel the trip, he said, while the remaining two had decided to continue their tours to Chiang Mai and Phuket despite the Thai military announcing a coup and imposing a nighttime curferw yesterday.

“The situation in Thailand seems to be quite calm for now, although we heard about the coup,” said Tung.

“Of course we need to follow the information provided to us by the Security Bureau, so travel agencies have decided to cancel all the tours.”

He said the agencies would meet again on Wednesday next week to decide the fate of groups scheduled to set off on May 31 and later.

There are currently 1,200 people in 50 tour groups in Thailand and another 1,200 individual Hong Kong visitors, according to Tung.