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Travellers who are affected by the fire at the residential and commercial building, New Lucky House (Address: 15 Jordan Road, Jordan, Kowloon), may contact the  Hong Kong Tourism Board  at +852 8102 8020 for assistance. 

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New travel industry rules begin Sept 1

The Travel Industry Authority will take over licensing and regulatory functions of the travel industry starting tomorrow, the Culture Sports & Tourism Bureau announced today.

It explained that the new regulatory regime of the travel industry will be implemented in full on September 1 and the authority will take over the functions of the Travel Agents Registry in respect of issuing licences to travel agents, and the functions of the Travel Industry Council in respect of issuing passes to tourist guides and tour escorts as well as regulating the industry.

The authority will also be responsible for managing the Travel Industry Compensation Fund and collecting levies from travel agents.

In addition to disbanding the registry, the council will cease its works in relation to issuing passes and regulations on the same day.

Secretary for Culture, Sports & Tourism Kevin Yeung said the implementation of the new regulatory regime is an important step for enhancing the professionalism of the trade and promoting the long-term healthy development of the city’s travel industry.

Mr Yeung emphasised that the Government will work closely with the authority and the trade to ensure the new regulatory regime will be implemented in an orderly manner. He also thanked the council for its efforts in regulating the trade over the years.

The authority is a statutory regulatory body of the travel industry established under the Travel Industry Ordinance. It is mainly responsible for the licensing and regulation of travel agents, tourist guides and tour escorts.

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Introduction of Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong

The Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong (TIC) was established in 1978 and entrusted by law in 1988 to self-regulate travel agents in Hong Kong. It has since then become the representative organisation of the industry and has always been dedicated to raising the standard of professionalism of the industry, with strict requirements thus set for outbound and inbound travel agents, tourist guides and tour escorts in order that outbound and inbound travellers are provided with quality service.

Over the past four decades, the TIC has offered various services to members such as organising activities, training courses, seminars and workshops; setting down and enforcing various rules and regulations to uphold a high standard of service and fair competition within the industry; and issuing regular publications. Recently, the TIC is also developing a Belt and Road and Greater Bay Area Web-based Tourism Resource Platform, as well as organising visits to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, to help members grasp the tourism development opportunities. The TIC is also committed to raising awareness of travel safety and travel protection among travellers, and handling enquiries and complaints lodged by outbound travellers and inbound visitors.

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Hong Kong unveils more support for travel and tourism industry

More initiatives to support Hong Kong’s travel and tourism industry have been detailed, following the government’s 2023/24 budget announcement last week.

The Travel Agents Incentive Scheme, which is due to expire end of March 2023, will be extended by three months. New schemes for fully guaranteed loans will be offered to eligible passenger transport operators and licensed travel agents, with about HK$2.7 billion (US$344 million) set aside for this purpose. Furthermore, some HK$30 million will be injected into the Information Technology Development Matching Fund Scheme for Travel Agents.

Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) will also get an additional HK$200 million to fund its fight for more international business events and high value‑added visitors, allowing it to consolidate Hong Kong’s position as the premier business events destination in the region.

In response to these measures, Travel Industry Council (TIC) chairman Gianna Hsu told TTG Asia that the industry is disappointed that the proposed Travel Industry Resumption Fund had fallen through.

The fund, first put forward to secretary for culture, sports and tourism Kevin Yeung by Legislative Council member Perry Yiu Pak-leung in a meeting last November, was meant to support the beleaguered travel and tourism industry in relaunching their business.

Yiu recognised that the industry needed to recruit manpower and carry out repair and maintenance for equipment and facilities that have been left idle for a long period of time, putting them under tremendous cash flow pressure as they prepare for tourism recovery.

In a press statement, TIC reiterated the financial and manpower challenges faced by its stakeholders in the present early stage of tourism recovery.

Hsu also told TTG Asia : “We wish for more supportive measures to be deployed in future. Hopefully, the government will keep monitoring our business situation and lend its support in a timely manner.”

The return of arrivals from China, a major source market, is still slow, according to Hsu. While Chinese tour groups are now allowed to travel to Hong Kong, the destination receives no more than 20 tour groups from China daily.

“It is hoped that the numbers will triple in March,” she said.

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Disneyland hoping for Anaheim City Council's ‘green light' on $1.9 billion development proposal

A $1.9 billion proposal that is expected to bring even more attractions to Disney Resorts in Anaheim could be approved by the City Council at Tuesday night's meeting.

The park, which already sits on 490 acres, is not looking to expand, but to add to the already permitted space Disney has.

The city of Anaheim’s planning commission gave its approval to the proposal on March 11. Tuesday night's City Council meeting is at 5 p.m. Should the council approve the vote this evening, the second vote would take place on May 7.

The proposal, DisneylandForward , will allow for theme park attractions alongside hotels west of Disneyland Drive and theme park attractions alongside new shopping, dining, and entertainment on the southeast of what is currently the Toy Story Park Area.

Disney would also pay $39.6 million to take on responsibility for Magic Way, according to the proposal.

A DisneyFoward fact sheet mentions the park would update and extend through 2064 a 1996 development agreement for Disney California Adventure, Downtown Disney District and Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa. The current agreement runs through 2036.

Other investments by Disney would include $30 million for affordable housing, sewer improvements, funding for street and transportation improvements, and a continued workforce.

A 2023 Economic Impact Summary by Disneyland Resort mentioned that both Disneyland and Disney California Adventure Park were the top two most visited parks in the world, bringing in 13.55 million visitors.

Proposed zoning changes could allow for the building of attractions in Anaheim like those seen at Disney parks across the world .

Disney's goal is to create what it calls more immersive experiences for tourists, similar to the attraction Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, which opened in California in 2019. The company said it doesn’t yet know which stories would be central to the new developments, but the idea is to create areas like “Zootopia” in Shanghai Disneyland, where animal characters walk through a vibrant cityscape that resembles the setting of the film.

Other possible attractions may include Frozen like the one at Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, Toy Story Land, currently at Disneyland Hollywood Studios Florida and Tron, featured both in Shanghai Disneyland and Magic Kingdom Park in Florida.  

Disney has emphasized their commitment to working together with Anaheim on the planning and placement of bike lanes and bridges. Potential plans to build bridges over Harbor Boulevard, Katella Avenue and Disneyland Drive would also be considered.

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‘The old days are no more’: Hong Kong goes quiet as security laws tighten their grip

NGOs and bookshops are closing, media organisations are leaving and democracy activists are on trial

“I deas are bulletproof”. Three words , stamped out in multicolour tiles above a doorway, represented one of the last vestiges of Hong Kong’s once vibrant literary spaces. On 31 March, Mount Zero, a beloved independent bookstore in Hong Kong, closed its doors for the final time. Hundreds of Hongkongers came to say goodbye.

The bookshop, which opened in 2018, took its slogan from the 2005 film V for Vendetta; the eponymous antihero’s Guy Fawkes mask occasionally appeared during Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests.

Mount Zero’s closure, which was announced after what the owner said was repeated inspections from the authorities, came as Hongkongers are coming to terms with a new reality of life with not one but two national security laws, which critics say are being used to crush dissent.

“People are quickly adjusting to the idea that the old days of public expression are no more,” says Bao Pu, the founder of New Century Press, a publishing house.

The pro-democracy protests that rocked Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020 feel like an increasingly distant memory. Where 2 million people once flooded the streets to oppose the government’s plans to establish closer links with mainland China, an individual can now be jailed for wearing a “seditious” T-shirt.

The quietening is largely because of a national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in June 2020. Authorities say the law was necessary to restore stability; critics say the vaguely worded crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces effectively criminalise dissent.

Considering the millions of people who took to the streets in 2019 and 2020, relatively few people have actually been arrested under the law: 292 as of 31 January .

“That is intentional,” says Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor of Chinese history at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink. More than 800 people have been arrested for rioting, while nearly 300 people have been targeted using a colonial-era sedition law. Protesters have been targeted with more than 100 different types of offences. “It is hard for people to realise how much things have changed when you see these divided-up numbers,” Wasserstrom says.

And now the authorities have another tool in their arsenal: Article 23 , a homegrown national security law that covers newly defined acts of treason, espionage, theft of state secrets, sedition and foreign interference.

The government has been on the offensive in condemning what it calls “scaremongering” about the new legislation. A spokesperson said it “only targets an extremely small minority of people who endanger national security”.

The legislation has been decades in the making. It comes from a provision in Hong Kong’s 1997 Basic Law. But a previous attempt to implement it in 2003 prompted 500,000 people to protest, causing the bill to be shelved. In 2024, the streets were silent.

“The children of the [2003] protesters are now going to suffer through what their parents fought against,” says Mark Sabah, director of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.

Both of those generations have been swept up in a mass trial of pro-democracy figures who are waiting – most of them in jail cells – for judges hand-picked by the chief executive to decide their guilt or innocence. The prosecution of the Hong Kong 47, as they’ve come to be known, includes well-known figures such as Joshua Wong and Benny Tai and has been extensively criticised by foreign governments, human rights groups and the defendants’ lawyers.

First arrested in 2020, they were accused of plotting to bring down the government by holding informal pre-election primaries. The formal charge is “conspiracy to subvert state power”. The arrests themselves were labelled politically motivated.

The 10-month trial ended in December. A verdict would normally be expected within six months, but given the complexity and size of the proceedings – 16 of the 47 pleaded not guilty, with the remainder awaiting sentencing – many expect it to be delayed. The accused have already spent more than 1,000 days behind bars and face sentences of up to life in prison.

And while observers wait for that verdict, there are also concerns about the ongoing trial of Jimmy Lai, a British citizen and former medial mogul who has been detained since December 2020. His trial for colluding with foreign forces is expected to end in May, having been plagued by accusations that it is politically motivated and that one of the witnesses was tortured. The 76-year-old faces spending the rest of his life in prison.

Outside the courts, the government is keen to give the impression that life continues as normal. There are dozens of major events planned for the first half of this year, a lineup the government says will attract locals and tourists to “participate and experience Hong Kong’s unique glamour”. More than 75,000 people attended this year’s Art Basel, according to its organisers, despite calls to boycott the art fair because of concerns about censorship.

And despite the widespread feeling among activists that Hong Kong is becoming like any other Chinese city, differences remain. The territory still has an open internet. It is still possible to buy materials that are banned in mainland China , although the number of vendors is dwindling. Bao’s New Century Press recently published a biography of a senior Chinese Communist party official who played an important role in the Cultural Revolution. A Chinese buyer despaired when the book was confiscated on three separate occasions as he tried to take it into the mainland.

“And so far nobody has kidnapped me,” Bao jokes. “Not yet.”

But the chipping away of civil society continues. On 10 April, a representative from the NGO Reporters Without Borders was detained for several hours at Hong Kong International airport and then deported, as she attempted to travel to the city to monitor Lai’s trial. In March, Radio Free Asia, a US-funded media outlet, closed its Hong Kong bureau , citing fears for staff safety because of Article 23. A journalist at the South China Morning Post went to Beijing in October for a defence conference and disappeared . At least 90 NGOs and 22 media groups have closed since the 2020 national security law, according to the Centre for Asian Law at Georgetown University.

“If we really want Hong Kong to go back to a prosperous, safe and free city, I think we need to have a rapprochement, a dialogue with some people,” says Emily Lau, a veteran pro-democracy politician and former legislator. “Most people here accept that we are part of China. They’re not going to use violence to overthrow the government, but they would like the freedom to express their views … like they have been doing for decades.”

On 11 April, Mount Zero posted photographs of its final day on Instagram. “People came one after another, a few young people asking each other, what exactly are we going to do?” the caption reads. “No one knew the specific answer.”

Additional research by Chi Hui Lin

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