Coronavirus: creditor serves Hong Thai Travel Services with winding-up petition but Hong Kong agency blames delay in fund transfers for overdue payment

Name: Six months after WHO declared Covid-19 a public health emergency, what more do we know now?
Uploaded: 2020-07-31T11:43:33.000Z
Duration: 7 min 54 s
Description: Six months after WHO declared Covid-19 a public health emergency, what more do we know now?

Travel agency, one of the city’s oldest, says it remains optimistic and financially stable despite the challenges sparked by Covid-19 crisis

Creditor Webport, trading as Scandinavian tour operator RTS, filed petition on Thursday

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The coronavirus pandemic has badly affected Hong Thai Travel Services and other agencies. Photo: Dickson Lee

Jasmine Siu

Published: 7:43pm, 31 Jul 2020Updated: 7:13pm, 3 Aug 2020

One of Hong Kong’s biggest travel agencies has been served with a winding-up petition by another tour operator as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the industry.

But Hong Thai Travel Services on Friday said the outstanding payment was merely the result of a delay in fund transfers, and assured the public that it remained optimistic and financially stable despite the challenges of the past seven months.

“We have already prepared the funds for payment,” the company said in response to the petition filed on Thursday by creditor Webport, trading as Scandinavian tour operator RTS. “We believe the problem can be resolved very quickly.”

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Six months after WHO declared Covid-19 a public health emergency, what more do we know now?

RTS is a business-to-business tour operator which provides destination management of groups and individual travellers in Northern Europe, including countries such as Iceland, Denmark and Latvia.

The High Court has scheduled the first hearing on November 4.

The Hong Kong-based agency is one of the oldest in the city, boasting the largest number of customers for 14 consecutive years, after it began offering tours around the world in 1966.

But its business plummeted this year as Covid-19 resulted in border closures, travel restrictions and social-distancing measures that forced global tourism to a near standstill.