Roundup: HK ready to receive Golden Week holiday makers

Monday is the first day of the seven-day Golden Week holidays of the Chinese mainland, and various Hong Kong cross-boundary check points have added more hands for receiving a large number of Chinese mainland holiday makers.

Over 420,000 Chinese mainland tourists are expected to visit Hong Kong from April 29 to May 8 and Monday is expected to be the peak inbound day with 210,000 of inbound passengers.

Hong Kong Disneyland, one of the most popular tourist destinations in Hong Kong, opened the theme park half an hour earlier than the normal opening hour, in an effort to avoid the stream of visitors.

About 100 tourists had already gone to the park before its opening and they did not want to line in long queues for playing the games.

Visiting Hong Kong Disneyland is still the expectation of many mainland tourists to Hong Kong.

To ensure the smooth visiting of the theme park, most of the visitors there have already reserved the "designated day" tickets as the theme park's ceiling visitor-receiving capacity is around 30,000.

Some other people expecting to visit the park have booked the tickets either by joining the travel agencies' tours or asked friends in Hong Kong to reserve tickets at various travel agencies or via internet.

A number of tourists failed to visit the park during the Chinese new lunar year holidays because of the park's improper management.

Hong Kong Ocean Park, a major rival of Hong Kong Disneyland, has also made full preparations for luring mainland holiday makers.

The Ocean Park received larger number of tourists groups than the same day of last year. Though the number of visitors to the park did not reached its ceiling, tourists had to wait about 45 minutes for visiting the Sea Jellyfish Aquarium, a new entertainment item in the park.

Hong Kong Jockey Club will arrange two races on May 3 and May 7, Chinese mainland tourists can enter the Shatian Racing Course without any charge and they can also get souvenir from the Jockey Club.

Various shopping malls and department stores have taken various measures to attract Golden Week passengers and the passenger flows to the many of them increased by 10 percent on Sunday.

The Lame Crowford of the Times Square, passengers spending over 1,000 Hong Kong dollars (128 U.S. dollars) can take part in a lucky draw and the top price will be a double air ticket to London and have a three-nights in a luxury hotel.

Chinese mainland passengers can also receive gifts from Times Square if they buy over 300 HK dollars (38.5 U.S. dollars) of goods.

The Sogo Department Store has extended its business hours to 11: 00 p.m., or one hour longer, from Monday to Saturday. Various brands in the department store have offered 20-percent discount for holiday passengers.

Some fans of top international brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton lined in queues in the their boutiques in the Harbor City and Sogo to their long dreamed begs, as the prices of the luxury goods are about 20 to 30 percent higher in the Chinese mainland.

Passengers can also have pictures taken with a horse as its owner. Only the picture taken with a horse attracted nearly 300 passengers on Sunday.

Quite a number of mainland travel groups have arrived in Hong Kong via In Lok Ma Chau check point.

Lo Wu check point has been the most busy check point among all Hong Kong land check points. It handled over 280,000 inbound and outbound passengers on Sunday, one day before the Golden Week holidays.

Hong Kong received about 300,000 inbound passengers on Sunday.

Source: Xinhua