HK sees strong inflow of holiday makers
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-10-02 13:47

Over 400,000 people, including Chinese mainland tourists, have arrived in Hong Kong from marine, land and air check points from Friday to Saturday noon, to spend the National Day "Golden Week" holidays starting on Saturday.

Hong Kong Disneyland has been a major tourist attraction for the Chinese mainland holiday makers. Several hundreds of tourists arrived at the theme park before its opening and the park opened one hour earlier than the usual time.

Hong Thai Travel Services Ltd has already listed the two-day and three-day Hong Kong Disneyland tours as one of the major tours for the company during the holidays.

In the first three days of the Golden Week, the travel agency will arrange about 500 passengers to visit Disneyland each day and quite a number of travel agencies have already asked the Hong Kong Disneyland to increase entrance ticket quotas for them.

Hong Kong tourism sector believed the Oct. 2 and 3 are expected to be the peak period for Hong Kong Disneyland.

Hong Kong Disneyland spokesperson said on Saturday that sales of the theme park tickets were quite good. However there remains tickets during the Golden Week.

By the noon of Saturday, over 10,000 tourists went to visit the Disneyland and the park has already decided to extend its business hours to 10:00 p.m. during the holidays.

Tourists usually wait 15 to 30 minuets for playing an outdoor game. The ceiling number of tourists to the theme park is about 30,000.

Hong Kong Ocean Park, a rival of Hong Kong Disneyland, said on Saturday that it received similar number of tourists on Saturday as that of last National Day.

To attract more travelers, the number of daily dolphin performances have been increased from two to five a day.

The Ocean Park expects to receive 10 percent of more tourists to the park during the Golden Week. It received over 90,000 tourists during last Golden Week.

In an effort to attract more passengers, the newly opened Sogo department store in Tsim Sha Tsui and a number of Hong Kong retailers are offering discounts targeting at Chinese mainland holiday makers.

The Times Square arranged buffoon carnival and a precious watch exhibition apart from offering top-prize coupons as much as 15,000 HK dollars (1,935 US dollars) for its customers during the holidays.

The Harbor City, biggest shopping center in Hong Kong along one side of the Victoria Harbor, opened its outdoor car parking lot to passengers to watch the fireworks display Saturday night, in an effort to lure more customers.

The Harbor City distributed tickets for watching the fireworks display to passengers via Hong Kong Tourism Board.

The Immigration Department has already added 250 staff members to various check points to help the smooth clearance of passengers to Hong Kong.

In Lo Wu Check Point, Hong Kong's biggest land check point, passengers have to wait about 15 minutes for clearance during the peak hours on Saturday.

Hong Kong tourism sector expects to receive a total of 500,000 Chinese mainland tourists around the Golden Week, up 10 percent over last year's same period.

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