Extended hours at mainland China border ease Hong Kong’s Lunar New Year travel woes
- Extending the hours at Lo Wu and Shenzhen Bay border crossings run smoothly, boosting mainland visits to Hong Kong and supporting the local economy
The stranding of mainland tourists after the New Year’s Eve fireworks has turned out to have a silver lining, prompting the authorities to extend the opening hours of two border crossings during Lunar New Year to avoid a repeat of embarrassing scenes. It all went smoothly, making a strong case for officials to not only repeat the extensions at the Shenzhen Bay and Lo Wu crossings, but also seriously consider adopting the measure at other checkpoints.
This is one of the highlights of the holiday that saw Hong Kong continue a gradual bounce back from the decimation of cross-border tourism by pandemic travel curbs. Immigration figures show mainlanders made more than 650,000 trips to Hong Kong in the first four days of the Lunar New Year holiday – exceeding mainland arrivals of about 640,000 in the corresponding pre-pandemic period of 2018.
In the first four days, all visitors made a total of 745,598 trips, while locals made 1.3 million outbound trips.
A tourism industry spokesman said the number of tour groups from the mainland had reached two-thirds of pre-Covid levels within three days – about 200 groups each day during the break.
That said, the holiday delivered mixed messages. Many restaurants, for example, reported exceptional business.