Coronavirus: Hong Kong officials pledge action as complaints pile up over booking issues for helper quarantine rooms

Crashing web pages and blocked-off dates add to woes amid scramble for slots at designated hotels, employment agency sector leader says

Labour secretary Law Chi-kwong says he will work with sector to find solutions, but dismisses suggestions such as a lottery system

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Newly arrived Hong Kong domestic helpers are taken by bus to their designated quarantine facility. Photo: Winson Wong

Published: 8:10pm, 27 Oct 2021Updated: 10:20pm, 27 Oct 2021

Hong Kong authorities have pledged to look into online reservation issues at quarantine facilities for foreign domestic workers amid employment agency complaints about problems accessing booking platforms.

Individual employers and agencies scrambled to book slots after the government this week added the 500-room Rambler Garden Hotel in Tsing Yi as a third designated facility for inbound helpers.

Thomas Chan Tung-fung, chairman of the Hong Kong Union of Employment Agencies, on Wednesday said the hotel’s booking page showed vacancies for November and December, but many employers were unable to make the required 21-day reservations because some dates were blocked off.

“Perhaps it’s an issue with the server capacity of the hotel’s booking system,” Chan said. “The webpage also kept crashing. Many people experienced this on Monday morning when the Rambler Garden Hotel opened for bookings.”

The 500-room Rambler Oasis Hotel in Tsing Yi this week became the third facility designated to host domestic workers arriving in Hong Kong. Photo: Jonathan Wong

With a backlog of some 6,000 domestic helpers from the Philippines and Indonesia waiting to work in Hong Kong, Chan speculated the server handling the online bookings might have simply crashed due to high traffic.

Chan added that employers desperate to get coronavirus quarantine slots for their helpers typically asked several family members or colleagues to wait in the online queue for a better chance of securing a space.