'Expand Individual Visit Scheme to bring in tourists'
A tourism trade representative said on Monday that the government should review the mainland individual traveller’s scheme to include more Chinese cities to revive the local tourism trade. The chief operations officer of Miramar Group, Alan Chan, said Hong Kong's connectivity with the mainland has improved drastically over the past few years with the extension of the high-speed rail line and the opening of new land borders. However, he said the Individual Visit Scheme – which has remained unchanged over the past 16 years – is unable to keep up with the times.  Chan said there are 26 mainland cities that Hong Kong is directly linked to via direct flights or high-speed trains, but people in those cities cannot visit Hong Kong on an individual basis.  "If these 26 cities are included in the scheme, that will add 10.6 percent of the country's population. The current scheme, which covers 49 cities, that's 30.1 percent of the population. So an additional 10.6 percent will be an increase of one-third,” he said.  “And people from most of those cities will be long-haul tourists and may stay in hotels. That will be a boost to the local retail and hotel trade." 34 million visitor arrivals were recorded for the whole of 2023, according to provisional figures from the Hong Kong Tourism Board.  Tourism sector lawmaker Perry Yiu said even though last year's figure is already higher than expected, the trade should do more to bring traveller numbers back to pre-pandemic levels.  He noted that Hong Kong received more than 65 million visitors in 2018.