Hong Kong will give away 500,000 airline tickets worth HK$2 billion (US$254 million) as part of an effort early next year to entice travellers to visit the city once authorities remove all coronavirus restrictions for arrivals.
Report informs, citing South China Morning Star, that Dane Cheng Ting-yat, executive director of the Tourism Board, on Wednesday said his organisation would be handling the advertising campaign for the scheme, which was expected to launch in early 2023, while the Airport Authority would distribute the tickets.
“Once the government announces it will remove all Covid-19 restrictions for inbound travellers, we’ll roll out the advertising campaigns for the free air tickets,” he said.
“The Airport Authority will finalise the arrangement with airline companies. The free plane tickets are not all for inbound tourists. Some of them will be given to outbound travellers, while some will be distributed via travel agents.”
The Airport Authority set aside HK$2 billion in 2020 to buy about 500,000 tickets from airlines, including Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong Express and Hong Kong Airlines, to promote the city’s tourism industry once the pandemic eased.
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu is already under pressure from business groups and industry leaders to provide a road map outlining Hong Kong’s return to normality, including the lifting of all entry restrictions for inbound travellers.
Official figures showed the number of inbound visitors to Hong Kong during the first eight months of this year reached 184,000, surpassing the 91,400 recorded for all of 2021. But the number was far below the 56 million people who visited in 2019.
In a bid to revive travel to Hong Kong, the government switched to a “0+3” entry scheme last week, scrapping the hotel quarantine requirement for arrivals in favour of a three-day surveillance period.
As a part of the new measures, travellers must take Covid-19 tests daily for a week and are issued an amber health code barring them from venues that require vaccine checks, such as night spots and restaurants.
In anticipation of the complete removal of all travel curbs, Cheng said the first phase of the global advertising campaign would focus on Asia and other short-haul markets. But the board would postpone any large-scale promotions directed at mainland China until the rest of the country’s entry restrictions were relaxed, he added.