Tung Chung in Hong Kong sees major improvements after measures to control crowd chaos from mega bridge
- Most day-trip tour groups flooding quiet neighbourhood have disappeared, leaving only handful of individual travellers, as residents find relief
A series of official measures to ease the tourist influx at a quiet Hong Kong suburb near the new cross-border sea bridge led to significant improvements on Saturday with smaller crowds, as residents breathed a sigh of relief.
At 12pm, no flag-wielding tour groups were spotted in Lantau Island’s Tung Chung, the closest residential area to the port facility of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. Visitors were mostly individuals seen sitting on benches or walking around mall areas.
This marked a stark contrast to previous weekends in which the town was flooded with thousands of mainland tourists who came in groups on public transport. Most were on day trips, eager to experience the 55km bridge, the world’s longest sea crossing, which opened in late October.
By 8pm on Saturday, 27,622 inbound travellers had used the bridge, about 8 per cent lower than the figure at the same time last week.
According to the Travel Industry Council, about 260 registered tours passed through the bridge this weekend, compared with a peak of 432 two weeks ago, and 354 last week.
Since the link opened for traffic on October 24, Tung Chung residents have been up in arms about their neighbourhood being flooded by visitors, with protests launched last month by local activists.
