HK ready to receive tourist inflows during Mid-Autumn Festival

Hong Kong's various tourism related departments have made full preparations for welcoming the Chinese mainland tourists who visit Hong Kong around the Mid-Autumn Festival that falls on Sept. 18.

The Immigration Department has added additional 200 staff members to various cross boundary check points to shorten the clearance time for passengers.

Quite a number of public bus routes have decided to extend the business hour to around 2:00 on Sunday and Monday mornings and add more buses for various routes.

While the Hong Kong Disneyland, the hottest tourist attractions in Hong Kong which opened on Sept. 12, opened half an hour earlier than the usual time, to welcome the first weekend after the theme park's opening, hundreds of tourists had lined up for entrance before its opening.

As the Mid-Autumn Festival is a traditional Chinese festival for family gathering, quite a number of Hong Kong citizens choose to tour Disneyland on Saturday, one day ahead of the festival.

Eva Cheung, Hong Kong commissioner for Tourism said in an interview with Hong Kong Commercial Radio that the weekend is not the "Gold Week Holiday" of the Chinese mainland, the number of tourist arrivals in Hong Kong during the weekend will be more or less the same as that of August. She estimated that 40,000 to 50,000 Chinese mainland tourists would travel to Hong Kong each day during the weekend.

On the newly opened Disneyland, she said, the tickets for Disneyland is sold well and she declined to reveal the detail number.

She said, though the theme park of Hong Kong Disneyland only cover 70 hectares of land, it will have expansion in the coming years.

Eva said each of the other four Disneyland theme parks in other countries have growth periods.

She said the Disneyland will add one more tourist attraction each year.

She emphasized that the it's not necessary to attach too much importance on just the size of the theme park, whether the visitors have a cheerful experience is more important.

According to sources from Disneyland, the reservation of the two hotels in Disneyland resort is very good at the weekend.

Source: Xinhua