Hong Kong’s government will give away 500,000 free air tickets to international travelers starting next month as part of a free-spending plan to promote Hong Kong tourism after the pandemic and as mainland China reopens from its strict “zero-Covid” policy.
Most of the air tickets, bought by the Airport Authority in 2020, will be distributed by local airlines while some will be handed out by travel agencies to international tourists.
A campaign known as “Hello Hong Kong” was launched by the government to tell good news stories about the city. The feel-good promotion comes after 15,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers left the city over the past two years.
The government also said it would soon scrap a pre-departure PCR Covid test requirement for mainlanders coming to Hong Kong in order to achieve a so-called full “border-reopening.”
From the time the pandemic broke out in Wuhan, Hubei, in January 2020, Hong Kong and the mainland implemented the world’s strictest quarantine and social-distancing rules until late 2022.
Over that period, many foreign companies moved their Hong Kong branches to other business hubs including Singapore while thousands of expatriates permanently left the city. A non-Covid-inspired exodus of Hongkongers was seen after Beijing imposed the harsh and vague National Security Law in the city on June 30, 2020.
On Thursday (February 2), the Airport Authority announced that Cathay Pacific, HK Express and Hong Kong Airlines would give away 500,000 free air tickets through lucky draws and games from March 1.
Each visitor with a free ticket is expected to bring two or three companions along, meaning that the program would attract another one million travelers to Hong Kong, said Fred Lam, chief executive of the Airport Authority.
Lam said the Airport Authority would additionally offer 80,000 free tickets to Hong Kong residents and 80,000 more to people living in other parts of the Greater Bay Area to travel abroad this summer.
The Tourism Board said it would also hand out at least one million vouchers worth over HK$100 (US$12.75), for tourists to use on drinks, food, shopping and transport.
With the recent relaxation of Covid rules, the number of incoming visitors rebounded to 605,000 last year from just 91,000 in 2021. In 2019, before the pandemic, the city received 56 million visitors, mostly from the mainland.
On January 8 this year, Hong Kong and the mainland resumed quarantine-free travel at their borders. Since, more than 700,000 visitors have traveled to the mainland while over 600,000 have entered Hong Kong. Some Chinese tourists chose to visit Macau, rather than Hong Kong, so they could skip pre-departure PCR testing.
Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee said Tuesday that he was confident that the PCR testing requirement for mainland visitors would be scrapped very soon.
Apart from luring tourists, the Hello Hong Kong campaign is also aimed at telling positive stories about China and Hong Kong in hopes of attracting some of those who moved out to return, said the government.
A net outflow of 230,000 people was recorded in Hong Kong in the three-year period up to mid-2022, according to the city’s population figures.
The UK Home Office said Wednesday it had welcomed 144,500 Hongkongers through the British National (Overseas) citizenship scheme since early 2021.
US Consul General Gregory May said on January 25 that 15,000 American residents, or 20% of the total, had moved out of Hong Kong over the last two years. He expressed concerns about the city’s declining academic freedom and freedom of expression – in the press or otherwise – under the National Security Law.
His remarks didn’t go over well with the authorities. The government strongly condemned what it called May’s “untruthful remarks, vilification and smearing.”
Commerce minister Algernon Yau said Radio Television Hong Kong, a public broadcaster, would help people living here and elsewhere learn more about Hong Kong.
“Foreigners living in Hong Kong and those in the mainland and overseas can know more about the latest developments in the special administrative region and its unlimited potential,” Yau said.
The exodus has resulted in vacancies at primary schools and kindergartens in Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers said a survey it conducted on 230 kindergartens found that they had lost 25% of students in this academic year. It said the government should increase subsidies to the kindergartens or many of them would have to be shut down.
The HK Aided Primary School Heads Association also said many primary schools recruited fewer pupils this academic year with some ending up with 50% of their new seats empty. The association said that, as the emigration wave would probably continue for some time, some schools would have to be closed down.
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