With international travel opening up after 2½ years of strict restrictions worldwide, thousands of Hong Kong residents are taking the opportunity to have summer holidays abroad.

Many have taken off even though airfares have shot up, with a return economy ticket between London and Hong Kong going for HK$41,000 (US$5,222) on Cathay Pacific this month.

Cirium, an aviation analytics company, said economy class airfares between the two cities were up 44 per cent compared with April 2019.

Immigration Department data shows there were more people leaving Hong Kong than arriving in June and in the first half of this month.

In the first two weeks of July, 91,181 people left Hong Kong, 11,909 more than the number who arrived. That net outflow exceeded June’s figure of 6,463 for the whole month.

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Hong Kong's travel restrictions are increasingly difficult to justify

Hong Kong's travel restrictions are increasingly difficult to justify

A survey of 1,000 Hongkongers by travel portal booking.com between April and May showed that 71 per cent planned to travel in the next 12 months as they yearned to “get away” after being stuck at home during the pandemic.

Outbound flight demand for travel from June to August grew more than 120 per cent year on year, and 35 per cent more than in the previous three-month period, said Lavinia Rajaram, Asia head of public relations for the Expedia Group.

London, Bangkok and Singapore were the top three summer destinations for Hongkongers, with strong demand for Paris and Toronto too.

Tommy Tam Kwong-shun, chairman of the Society of IATA Passenger Agents, a coalition of the largest travel agencies in Hong Kong, said he believed net outflow could increase significantly depending on how the government adjusted its quarantine policies.

Those arriving in Hong Kong currently must spend seven days in quarantine at designated hotels, although Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau has floated the idea of easing the rules to allow people to spend part of their isolation time at home.

Tam said he believed many of the travellers over summer were those with urgent matters to take care of, either for business or to visit family members they had not seen for a long time.

Holidaymaker Ma travelled alone, leaving her husband and two adult sons in Hong Kong. Staying with a friend in Manchester, she planned to visit various parts of the UK and Portugal.

Arriving in the UK on June 26, she was surprised initially to see people moving about freely without wearing masks, which are still compulsory when going out in Hong Kong.

“I don’t need to wear a mask at all, and can finally show off my lipstick,” she said.

One of her friends, insurance consultant Minny Po, 55, was also in London at the same time when she chanced upon Ma’s Facebook post from London Bridge.

“We are normally not in close contact, but sometimes see each other’s updates on Facebook. When I found out we were in the same place, I felt very happy,” said Po, who added that she chatted with Ma via WhatsApp afterwards.

She spent a month in the UK with her husband, visiting friends and relatives who migrated from Hong Kong. She returned on Tuesday and began serving her seven-day hotel quarantine.

Po said she was not concerned about the risk of being infected with Covid-19 while travelling as she had caught the virus previously and it was “not a big deal”.

But falling ill on holiday has wrecked the plans of other travellers who tested positive for Covid-19.

David, 38, a British-born Hong Kong resident, visited the UK and Romania with his Romanian wife and two children, aged two and four.

The family’s first trip since the pandemic was meant to be for four weeks, but had to be extended when all four tested positive in Romania several days ago.

David, who works in a global bank, had to fork out an extra HK$90,000 to rebook flights and their quarantine hotel. Originally due in Hong Kong on July 25, they will now return on August 21.

“My older child, who turns five in August, will miss the first week of school at least. This is tough as it’s the induction for her first year at a big school,” he said.

A Cathay Pacific Airways spokesman said the airline began the year with flights to 29 destinations and aimed to double that figure by the end of 2022. As of this month, it has resumed flights to 45 destinations.

It carried 150,077 passengers last month, nearly 270 per cent more than in June last year.

Secondary school teacher Jennifer Chung, 35, was happy when she found out that a colleague would be in Ireland around the same time as her. Both are visiting family and friends.

“I was thrilled to hear someone else trying to get out of Hong Kong,” said the Hongkonger, who left on July 1 and will be travelling with her partner for the whole month.

She said she hoped to catch up with her colleague over beers while on holiday.

Chung booked her air tickets in March, as soon as the Hong Kong government announced it would halve the hotel quarantine period to seven days.

She paid HK$48,000 for two round-trip premium economy class tickets from Hong Kong to Ireland and back with Virgin Atlantic. The original flight was cancelled, but she paid a similar price a month later on Turkish Airlines.

She counted herself fortunate because airfares have risen even more since the summer.

“I had friends who only decided in late May to go back to Europe. The price for the same ticket had shot up to HK$66,000 for two tickets,” she said.