Travel agents' airport ordeals

Next time you book an air ticket out of Hong Kong, ask your travel agent what he or she thinks of Chek Lap Kok. Then stand back. You're likely to catch a blast as red hot as the exhaust from a jumbo jet.

Travel agents are not happy. It seems these core professionals of the tourism industry were never directly consulted at any stage about airport planning.

Little wonder there have been so many complaints. How can you build such a facility without direct, close personal consultation and input from the very people who are going to use it? Travel agents should be accustomed to being ignored. It happens often. They are the lifeblood of the tourism industry, but are frequently overlooked.

Nobody can argue that the opening of Chek Lap Kok was a disgraceful shambles. Since then, the airport has settled into some sort of order. Travellers can come and go without too much hassle. There are still numerous complaints about toilets, catering, transport and signage, but basically the airport is working effectively.

It's being fine-tuned to iron out defects which should have been obvious before it opened.

There has also been a massive drive to persuade the world, and Hong Kongers, that all is now well, that the airport, finally, is living up to the ballyhoo that preceded its opening. There were a few minor problems, this message says soothingly. But worry not; all is now well.

That's not true. All is definitely not well. Just go to Chek Lap Kok and look around at the arrival of tour groups.

It's a mess. A direct lack of planning is to blame. Obvious defects could have been avoided if the airport planners had listened to airport users.

Sit around a table with four experienced travel agents and ask them what remains wrong with Chek Lap Kok two months after the disastrous opening. You had better have an empty afternoon in front of you; they've got a comprehensive list.

These are not casual travellers who like to moan. These professionals are the very backbone of our tourism industry. It is they, their firms and their worldwide connections who are responsible for bringing millions of people to Hong Kong. These are people, surely, to whom airport planners should listen.

Apparently not. Jenny May, general manager of Tour East and chairman of the In-Bound Committee of the Hong Kong Association of Travel Agents, says her organisation was never directly consulted about Chek Lap Kok planning.

Never.

The result, says Chu Siu-ling, executive director of P.C. Tours and Travel, is: 'A disaster for our industry.' The In-bound Division Manager of P&O Travel, Irene Law, adds: 'There's no meet-and-greet area for travel agents. How are we supposed to find our clients?' Paul Y.L. Leung, managing director of Holiday World Tours, contends the lack of discussion between the authorities and planners and the travel agent industry is typical.

The end result, all agree, is a basic lack of planning and foresight. In turn, this absence of consultation means endless cost and chaos for both tour agents and their customers - and for Hong Kong's ailing tourism industry.

Two weeks after the debacle of Chek Lap Kok's premature opening, irate travel agent professionals put together a list of what was wrong with the airport.

They came up with 51 specific faults. Some of these were temporary. Others involved basic design errors.

'It's not as if the architects have never designed an airport before,' complains Ms Law. 'Yet they made so many mistakes!' Howard Young, who represents the tourism industry in Legco, says he believes travel agents were consulted. He sent a lengthy letter to the Airport Authority which included some of the complaints by tour guides.

What makes travel agents particularly irate is that the much-vaunted Chek Lap Kok gives them significantly fewer benefits than creaky old Kai Tak. Even Mr Young concedes that the group check-in facilities at Kai Tak, which were added on to the complex in an ad hoc manner, worked surprisingly well.

They worked much better than Chek Lap Kok; there is no desk at all for travel agents to meet arriving clients.

Why not? The executive director of the Hong Kong Hotels Association, James Lu, says one reason travel agents are unhappy is that the Airport Authority does not regard them as 'major users.' Ms May sighs. Her company, Tour East, handles 8,000 passengers a month. All need to be met and helped into town and to their hotels. That's part of their package. Yet there is not a single sign at Chek Lap Kok's sprawling arrival hall which points to travel agents. The general meeting-point standing sign is about as big as a telephone box and is almost totally useless.

The Hong Kong Tourist Association (HKTA) reckons about 40 per cent of total arrivals are travelling on some sort of package; this is 'not a major user?' Score yet another example of monumental arrogance to the autocratic Airport Authority.

Last Wednesday, I went to Chek Lap Kok and milled about with arriving tourists. Welcome to bedlam. At arrival hall A, bewildered guests couldn't find the hotel industry desk. That's not surprising. It's just a desk. There is no elevated sign, which was unmistakable at Kai Tak. The signage is at waist height; get three tourists asking for their hotel, and the sign is totally hidden.

But at least it's a focus to which arrivals can be directed. There's not even that humble facility for travel agents. Tour guides have to hunt through floods of arriving visitors to find their groups.

It is a ridiculous system.

Once tourists are located, it's a long tramp down to the tour bus. Here again, there is another example of basic bad planning. The tour bus pulls into its slot and the overhead roof protects only the nose of the bus.

Tour guides and passenger luggage get soaked as baggage is loaded. Unless the rain falls obligingly straight down, tourists get damp in heavy rain as they try to enter the bus.

Welcome to Hong Kong, city of wonders. Even if the HKTA and Airport Authority did regularly consult travel agents, as they claim they did, via the Travel Industry Council, then surely these most basic problems would have been avoided.

Adding insult to professional injury, the travel agents are now even more enraged by an arrogant letter from Patrick Kwok, senior manager for 'events and services' of the HKTA. He has written to tour operators and travel agents chiding them for using luggage trolleys as makeshift offices in the arrivals hall.

'This presents a negative image to the travelling public,' Mr Kwok writes with imposing pomposity. He threatens the Airport Authority will enforce bylaws if the situation does not improve.

'Tremble and obey,' is the message. I thought the HKTA was supposed to be the servant of the travel industry, not its dictatorial master.

If the HKTA and the Airport Authority had done their jobs right in the first place, the travel agents would have proper facilities at Chek Lap Kok and would not have to prop up their signs and paraphernalia on trolleys.

The lavishly funded HKTA would do well to try to improve the situation instead of adopting bully-boy tactics against people who are struggling in the front lines to keep alive the Hong Kong tourist industry.