WHY THE WORLD IS WATCHING THE BAY

The continued development of the Greater Bay Area will help Cathay Pacific serve millions more travellers in mainland China

There’s a new acronym in town: GBA, or Greater Bay Area. More commonly known as the Pearl River Delta, it refers to the cluster of nine cities in China’s Guangdong province plus the Special Administrative Regions (SARs) of Hong Kong and Macao. Spread across 56,000 square kilometres, the GBA has become a thriving industrial, technological, financial and logistics powerhouse that’s home to nearly 70 million people.

In February, the Chinese government published its blueprint for the region, underlining the importance of Hong Kong as one of its critical transport and logistics hubs.

These developments have already had a major impact. A number of important recent openings include the extension of the high-speed rail service from mainland China to Hong Kong and the new Hong Kong-ZhuhaiMacao Bridge (HZMB), which has opened up the western part of Guangdong, reducing the time it takes shipments to get to Hong Kong from a whole day to a few hours.

For people flying out of Hong Kong, transport time is even quicker – the journey from Zhuhai to Hong Kong is around 45 minutes, while it’s quicker for those based in Shenzhen’s Futian district to get to Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) than Shenzhen’s own Bao’an International Airport.

Speaking at the Business Check-in Forum in February, Cathay Pacific’s Chief Executive Officer, Rupert Hogg, said: ‘ We want to work with the government, the airport and aviation authorities, and everyone to make it easy for people to get into the GBA and out from it. We will keep building our network – not just our big hub and spoke air network with the rest of the world, but also to every point in the GBA.’

Hong Kong is not the GBA’s sole hub; and the region’s development also means increased competition