For Hong Kong’s hotel and tourism sectors, the recovery from the pandemic has been painfully slow. The opening of mainland borders as the Covid-19 pandemic ended was supposed to provide the shot in the arm a beleaguered sector required. Hope has outpaced reality in this regard.
During the mainland’s May Day “golden week” holiday, visitor numbers to the city were still only two-thirds of those before the pandemic, thanks in part to the wet weather.
It is with this shortage fresh in mind that we welcome the decision to expand the solo traveller scheme to allow visitors from eight more mainland cities.
From May 27, tourists from eight provincial and regional capitals – Taiyuan in Shanxi, Hohhot in Inner Mongolia, Harbin in Heilongjiang, Lhasa in Tibet, Lanzhou in Gansu, Xining in Qinghai, Yinchuan in Ningxia and Urumqi in Xinjiang – no longer need to join tour groups, and may remain for up to seven days.
In the long term, the potential from the expansion is promising. The…