HK will plan ahead to attract travellers: tourism head
The Tourism Board's executive director on Saturday said Hong Kong will do more planning to attract travellers this year, in order to consolidate the city's role as an international tourism hub.  Speaking on a radio programme, Dane Cheng said he expects more visitors during the coming Lunar New Year holidays, with the night parade making its return after a five-year hiatus. Cheng stressed that the SAR is more prepared to welcome visitors this year. "In fact, we have started doing it in the last quarter of last year, which is to do a lot more advance planning and promotion. As we can have more certainty about events, mega-events being held in Hong Kong, that would be a very attractive way to get visitors," he said. "The earlier we do the promotion, the better, and people can do advance planning. Hopefully, with the better supply of flight capacity and also with a lot of the capacity handling being done properly, I think we can attract more visitors to come this year." He added that tourist numbers last year reached 34 million - 55 percent of pre-pandemic levels - and about 27 million of them came from the mainland. Cheng noted that Southeast Asian markets recovered the fastest, with visitor arrivals from the Philippines and Thailand in December exceeding pre-pandemic levels.