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Travel and Tourism

The board's Quality Tourism Services (QTS) Scheme encourages shops, restaurants and visitor accommodation facilities to offer good services. It enjoys broad support; as at the year end, 1,239 establishments with 8,179 outlets and 378 rooms had earned QTS accreditation.

Hospitality Initiatives

Hospitality is essential to sustaining tourism. The government runs a Hong Kong Young Ambassador Scheme to train young people to be polite and helpful to visitors and to develop a strong hospitality culture in schools and the community. About 250 young people render ambassadorial service on the programme every year.

Easier Entry for Visitors

Hong Kong is one of the world's most immigration-friendly cities. Travellers from some 170 foreign countries and territories enjoy visa-free access for stays of seven to 180 days. The Mainland's Individual Visit Scheme permits residents of 49 designated Mainland cities to visit Hong Kong on their own instead of travelling in tour groups. About 25 million Mainlanders. visited Hong Kong under the scheme in 2019, representing about 57 per cent of all Mainland arrivals.

Protection of Travellers

Travel agents must obtain a government licence and be council members to carry out travel business under the Travel Agents Ordinance. The council specifies that only tourist guides it accredits can be assigned to receive inbound visitors. The council investigates complaints and takes disciplinary action against travel agents who do not observe its rules. Hong Kong had 1,742 licensed travel agents and 5,988 accredited tourist guides as at end-2019.

The statutory Travel Industry Compensation Fund provides ex gratia payments of 90 per cent of the loss of outbound fares to outbound travellers in the event of a travel agent default. In 2019, ex gratia payments close to $1.6 million were paid to 953 travellers affected by six default cases. The fund also offers aid in cases of outbound travellers who sustain injuries or death in accidents in the course of an activity arranged by a travel agent. In 2019, it made an ex gratia payment of $36,000 for one accident that happened in 2018.

Tourism Cooperation

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism are implementing the Agreement on Further Enhancement of Tourism Cooperation between the Mainland and Hong Kong to strengthen collaboration in market regulation, joint promotion and information exchange. In 2019, the HKSAR Government, the Macao SAR Government and the governments of the nine Mainland cities in the Guangdong- Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area jointly established the Tourism Federation of Cities in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to promote tourism cooperation and development within the region.

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