All belted & on the road
Puneet Kumar, Senior Manager, Market Development–India, Hong Kong Tourism Board, is optimistic that the daily direct flights—Indigo from Bengaluru and SpiceJet from Delhi—will help drive growth in arrivals to Hong Kong and rebound their performance.
Q In what way does Hong Kong International Tourism Convention help to disseminate information to partners?
The Hong Kong International Tourism Convention was attended by over 1,000 participants including senior government officials, representatives of tourism authorities and trade partners from the nine mainland cities of the Greater Bay Area, the Macao Special Administrative Region and many other Mainland provinces, as well as 34 countries, including the Belt and Road countries. The convention provided an interesting opportunity for travel and trade professionals from across the globe to exchange thoughts and opinions on effectively utilising the vast tourism potential of the new initiative and development on the theme ‘Leveraging Belt and Road Initiative & Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Development’.
Q How do you think will the Belt and Road initiative help develop tourism?
With this Initiative, Hong Kong is committed to strengthening cooperation with different economies to promote tourism development, be it regionally or internationally. This includes major new operating infrastructures like the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and the Express Rail Line. It also includes the enhanced regional transportation network in Hong Kong. The cities in Greater Bay Area have signed a pact to commit development in four main areas: driving the development of tourism resources in the region for multi-destination tourism products and promotions, holding regular meetings to discuss opportunities for collaboration and enhancing communication by organising visits. Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area are appealing destinations with rich tourism resources and multi-destination tourism products which attract Indian travellers allowing them to enjoy and experience multiple tourist hotspots in this region with seamless connectivity to travel within the region.
Q Hong Kong has been witnessing a dip in Indian tourist arrivals. At a time when the Indian outbound market is only growing, what is the need of the hour?
At the beginning of 2017, the Hong Kong immigrations introduced Pre-Arrival Registration (PAR) for Indian nationals and it took few quarters in 2017 for both consumers and trade to adapt to the new requirement. As a result, we registered drop in our India arrivals. With our focused and consistent approach to educate and train India trade about PAR and visa procedures coupled with refreshed marketing partnership, we have started seeing rebound in our performance, as of YTD Nov 2018, arrivals stand at (-2.4 per cent) from India to Hong Kong. We are market performance with renewed interest in Hong Kong’s offerings towards the and leisure travel segment. with the launch of daily direct low-cost carriers, Indigo from Bengaluru and SpiceJet from Delhi and drive growth in arrivals to Hong Kong.
Q How do you intend to involve B2B partners in your marketing plan?
The Indian trade market is an important channel that helps to convert the travel demand we create through campaigns. Hence, it is imperative to educate and train them for promoting and selling Hong Kong. HKTB has a knowledge platform PartnerNet for travel agents and operators. Once travel trade members are registered on it, they gain access to research statistics; HKTB’s photo library; connect with potential business partners through our database of Hong Kong travel industry. They receive the latest information on promotional events.
An interesting feature is the enrolment for an online training programme – Hong Kong Specialist – to build knowledge about Hong Kong and facilitate their selling and promotion of the destination. To further engage and appreciate the efforts of Indian trade in promoting and selling Hong Kong, we also launched the Hong Kong Specialist Club and to become its member, the registered travel trade partner will have to successfully complete three online training modules to enjoy exclusive privileges, such as a complimentary experience pack and use the HKS Logo – Promote Your Expertise and Special Trade Offers.