Hong Kong’s new global promotional campaign will “kickstart” the city’s reopening to international travelers, the Hong Kong Tourism Board told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Friday.
As part of the “Hello Hong Kong” campaign, which was launched on Thursday, 500,000 air tickets will be given away over the next six months, starting in March.
The tickets will be given out through three Hong Kong’s carriers — Cathay Pacific, HK Express and Hong Kong Airlines.
The free tickets are part of the HK$2 billion ($255 milion) relief package that the government offered to airlines in 2020, during the height of the pandemic.
The Hong Kong Tourism Board is also investing a minimum of HK$100 million in the promotion of the campaign’s initial phase, it said at the launch ceremony.
But Hong Kong still faces a “dilemma” — its infrastructure has some catching up to do to accommodate the increase in visitors, said Dane Cheng, the tourism board’s executive director.
“I think this dilemma, we have actually been seeing from other markets and destinations when they started to reopen in the last year or so. It’s difficult to catch up … particularly for the airlines, the airports and even hotels,” he told CNBC.
“[But] you want to kickstart and … tell the world in a clear message that Hong Kong and then mainland — we have finally reopened.”
How the tickets are allocated
The ticket giveaway will be phased: It will start with Southeast Asian markets, followed by mainland China and North Asia, and lastly, other parts of the world.
Some 80,000 tickets have also been reserved for Hong Kong residents which authorities aim to give out in the summer.
The number of tickets for each region was based on “traffic shares” and visitor numbers from before the pandemic, said Cheng.
Fred Lam, the CEO of Hong Kong’s airport authority, also expects the free tickets to have multiplying effects on the number of visitors.
“We hope those who received the tickets will bring 2-3 more friends and family with them…
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