HK sees central role in developing tourism

Hong Kong — a cosmopolitan center having the best of both worlds — is betting big on playing a seminal role in regional tourism development along the Belt and Road route and the mega Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Top city officials have joined in the chorus calling for combined efforts to attain the goals.

“At a time of increasing unilateralism and protectionism, tourism is a welcome tonic — a buoyant multilateral embrace of shared experience, cultural cooperation and people-topeople bonds,” Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor told the inaugural Hong Kong International Tourism Convention on Wednesday.

“Indeed, connectivity, inclusiveness, the promise of mutual benefits and many other ambitions are the reasons why President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative some five years ago,” she said.

Multilateral cooperation, Lam pointed out, is no less central to the BRI and tourism development. Easing visa regulations, expanding flight connections, enhancing cultural cooperation, together with other considered measures, come as a much-needed boost for tourism.

So far, nationals from some 170 countries and territories have been granted visa-free access to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The SAR government, in future, will consider increasing the number of countries along the BRI route whose passports can be used to enter Hong Kong without an advanced visa, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mopo said at the convention.

He hoped those countries could also allow visa-free access for Hong Kong travelers for mutual benefit.

Hailed as a major pillar of the local economy, tourism contributes about 5 percent of Hong Kong’s economic output. Last year, the East-meetsWest city welcomed more than 58.5 million visitors.

Ranked as the most visited city in the world by Euromonitor International, as well as the world’s freest economy and China’s most international city, Hong Kong is uniquely positioned to drive tourism opportunities emanating from the BRI and the Bay Area, reckoned Lam, reinforcing the theme of enhancing connectivity.

This has much to do with a wellestablished infrastructure network that opens up fresh new opportunities for those with the foresight to jump on the regional tourism bandwagon.

Hong Kong International Airport, which stands as a Hong Kong calling card on the global map, connects more than 70 million passengers a year to 220 destinations. A new third runaway, scheduled to be completed by 2024, will increase that capacity to 100 million passengers annually.

In the past few months, the SAR has seen an impressive engineering feat underscored by the newly opened Hong Kong section of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link and the 55-kilometer Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge.

In the coming year, a new land boundary control point between Hong Kong and Shenzhen at Liantang/Heung Yuen Wai — the seventh such crossing — is due to be completed. The facility is expected to significantly shorten the time needed to travel from Hong Kong to the east of Shenzhen and beyond.