Visitor numbers topped one million in February
The Hong Kong Tourism Board on Wednesday said the number of visitors to the SAR last month passed the one-million mark for the first time since Covid broke out more than three years ago. Some 1.46 million tourists arrived in the city, triple the number recorded in January, although this was still only 30 percent of pre-pandemic levels. More than 1.1 million of the visitors came from the mainland. Officials said they would be offering visitors a greater range of vouchers, with 100,000 airport express tickets and 100,000 tourist day passes to dish out, along with RMB30 discounts for high-speed rail services. A new website developed by the Travel Industry Council will be giving away some of the tens of thousands of free plane tickets being used to get people visiting the SAR. "[The number] for the inbound [travellers] is about 30,000 tickets. For outbound, including Greater Bay Area residents, [there are] around 17,000," said the council's chairwoman Gianna Hsu. Hsu said despite uncertainties ahead, she is confident that the number of visitors to Hong Kong will continue to rise and the situation will not be worse than it has been over the last three years.