HK to give away 500,000 free air tickets to inbound visitors

Hong Kong on Thursday unveiled its "Hello Hong Kong" global promotional campaign aimed at luring visitors to the city, with 500,000 free plane tickets to be given out to visitors.

Airport Authority CEO Fred Lam Tin-fuk says that the airline tickets giveaway will begin on March 1 and will last for around six months. The 500,000 tickets were first procured by the authority back in 2020 to help the three local airlines get through the difficult period and attract visitors to the city once the epidemic had receded.

Lam says the tickets will be handed out through the airlines' overseas offices and agents in their major markets.

Some 80,000 free air tickets will also be given to Hong Kong citizens and another 80,000 to visitors from the Greater Bay Area in the summer, Lam adds, accounting for a giveaway of 700,000 airline tickets in total.

About three-quarters of the tickets will be given away to Asian visitors, based on the pattern of inbound visitor origins in pre-pandemic times, he says. The promotion will first target Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, to be followed by Northeast Asian countries and mainland China.