China snowstorms cripple tours
HONG KONG – Travel agencies are losing heavily as Lunar New Year tours are cancelled because of the snowstorms in the mainland.
The Standard newswire reported Travel Industry Council chairman Ronnie Ho Pak-ting as saying about 200 tours to Huangshan and Jinggangshan, between Jiangxi and Hunan provinces, and Chenzhou in Hunan, with departure dates until next Monday, have all been cancelled.
Six thousand tourists are affected by the move.
“We are very sorry to have inconvenienced [the travellers], but our decision is based on safety considerations, comfort and quality of service,” he said.
“For the Lunar New Year tours, the travel agencies have already paid the bills in advance to local guides and airlines.”
When added to previously cancelled tours to Changsha, Zhangjiajie and Guizhou, some local travel agencies that rely heavily on mainland holidays may have serious cashflow problems, he said.
He said clients can choose whether to keep their travel bookings for six months or switch to other tours unaffected by the blizzards.
Those wanting a refund will be charged between HK$50 and HK$300 depending on the length of the tours.
TIC executive director Joseph Tung Yiu-chung said about 70 to 80 tours, including those to Hunan and Shaoguan in Guangdong, were scrapped over the past week because of the blizzards.
“We hope everyone can understand [the situation of the travel agencies], because this time around it is very difficult [for them] to control,” he said.
Tung said inbound tours to Hong Kong have not been severely affected.
He expects the number of mainland visitors during the holiday period to increase by five percent over last year’s arrivals.
China Travel Service said the HK Tourism Commission has asked a few travel agencies to provide concessions to some of the hundreds of thousands of workers stranded in Guangdong to enable them to visit Hong Kong on one-day trips during the festive period.
“It is difficult to say how many people can come to Hong Kong as they need visas – it’s already too late for mainland authorities to grant them temporary visas for the territory,” Ng said.
He added that Disneyland, Ocean Park and Ngong Ping 360, would give concessions to the workers.
Report from The Standard Hong Kong
Ian Jarrett
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