HK to entice Taiwanese visitors lost to direct links
Hong Kong's tourism sector will launch more promotions to make up for the loss of Taiwanese visitors resulting from the recent advent of direct transport links across the Taiwan Strait.
'Direct cross-strait transport links are a crisis for us but it also brings us opportunities,' Terence Wang Man-man, Hong Kong Tourism Board's director in Taiwan, said. 'We have lost some businessmen but there are now more seats for families and other travellers to fly to Hong Kong.'
Board data shows that nearly 1.4 million Taiwanese visited Hong Kong in the first eight months this year, a fall of 10.6 per cent compared to the same period last year.
The latest figures were an improvement on the first seven months (January to July) - a 12.8 per cent year-on-year drop - or in the first six months of this year when the year-on-year fall was 13.1 per cent.
'The figures indicate that the effects of direct cross-strait transport links are decreasing gradually,' board executive director Anthony Lau Chun-hon said, adding that the effects of swine flu on tourism had also decreased.
Daily direct flights and direct shipping between the mainland and Taiwan began on December 15 last year. Before, many Taiwanese people had to fly via Hong Kong to travel to and from the mainland.
After the mainland, Taiwan was the second-largest source of visitors to Hong Kong and made up almost a tenth of total visitor arrivals.
Lau - who was in Taipei participating in the Hong Kong Association of Travel Agents' annual overseas convention at the weekend - said the board would focus on luring overnight visitors, who spent 24 times more than a transit passenger or about HK$5,000 per stay per person.
At the convention, speaker Stanley Yen, group president of Landis Hotel and Resort who is known as the 'godfather of Taiwan's hospitality industry', said transit travellers represented little economic value.
'Now we can decrease the unnecessary traffic, we should upgrade the clientele to the next level, which is to promote 'in-depth travelling'... and travel agents need to add value to their products,' Yen said.
One of the Hong Kong Tourism Board's initiatives to woo more visitors from Taiwan was to line up the island's famous food critics to lead tours to Hong Kong to try the city's food and wine.
The board will also join Guangdong and Macau for the first time to participate in the Taipei International Travel Fair next month, to woo Taiwanese visitors to travel to the three places in one trip.
Some travel agents in Taiwan have co-operated with airlines by offering free stays in Hong Kong as they travel back from the mainland to Taiwan.
'Airlines that don't offer cross-strait direct flights don't charge passengers for staying over in Hong Kong and we also offer a free night in hotel,' Pauline Chen Yu-fong, general manager of Skyway Tour Travel Service, said.
'The response has been good so far ... the number of clients choosing to travel via Hong Kong has surged by half,' Chen said.
