Demand for sight of medallists jams Urbtix system; fans queue for hours
A government department apologised yesterday after a trouble-plagued computer system forced fans to queue for hours for tickets to see China's Olympic gold medallists in Hong Kong next week.
Director of Leisure and Cultural services Thomas Chow Tat-ming apologised at a media briefing for the jammed Urbtix ticketing system, which took as long as 30 to 40 minutes to handle a single transaction at each counter between 10am and 11.30am.
'I apologise to the citizens who were unsuccessful in securing tickets today due to limitations in the computer system,' Mr Chow said.
The department expanded the system the previous night, but the server had reached its hourly capacity of 15,000 transactions the moment the tickets went on sale, he said.
'We will evaluate the situation with relevant parties and see if we need to adopt new techniques if we're selling tickets with huge demand via Urbtix,' he said.