Travel in city Hong Kong

Chinese people, cut off from the rest of the world for three years by stringent COVID-19 curbs, flocked to travel sites on Tuesday ahead of borders reopening next month, even as rising infections strained the health system and roiled the economy.

After a whole lot of “will they, won’t they,” Hong Kong has finally announced that visitors to the destination would no longer be subject to home monitoring for three days.

India is making a PCR Covid test mandatory for inbound arrivals from China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, and South Korea, from January 1.

In a sign of reviving Hong Kong to China transport links, Saturday’s visitors to the gambling hub of Macau exceeded 55,000, the highest daily arrivals since the pandemic began, the government said on its website.

Three years of COVID-19 forced Becky Zhang’s specialty food business in Macau to near collapse. Founded by her grandmother more than fifty years ago, her store selling pastries and dried beef only survived thanks to residents who bought small quantities to help keep them afloat.

Success in luxury hotel marketing was a little more black and white before the world became more woke. That’s the reality facing The Peninsula Hotels, which last week launched its Peninsula Perspectives campaign. A review of three ads from the campaign — set in Hong Kong, Istanbul, and London — reveals the high bar for success facing all luxury brands in marketing in an evolving media era.

Abel Zhao, co-founder & CEO of FreeD Group, a technology innovator that specializes in proprietary enterprise application solutions, has acquired 75-year-old Connexus Travel from the parent company of Cathay Pacific, Swire Group. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Oneworld Alliance is one of the three largest airline alliances in the world, along with Star Alliance and SkyTeam. While still the smallest in terms of members, prolonged Covid issues in Asia, where SkyTeam does a significant chunk of its businesses, has seen Oneworld rise to the number two spot in terms of revenue. The group made a total of $6.7bn in 2021.

The Google pages of many hotels — including premier properties — in the Himalayan hill towns of Darjeeling and Kalimpong in West Bengal have been defaced for fraud ahead of the holiday travel rush. Anybody looking for hotels in Darjeeling using the search engine will come across prominent photographs containing the hackers’ phone numbers over a section displaying pictures of rooms and amenities. “We have been lately facing incidents where fraudsters are posting their mobile numbers with payment options to book not only our properties but also several others in the region. We are continually monitoring this and flagging all such posts as ‘spam’ for Google to review and have them removed,” said Viraj Oberoi, director of Elgin Hotels & Resorts, a luxury heritage hotels chain with properties in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Sikkim. Cyber miscreants are removing hotel details and creating their own profiles with personal contact details, said Sandipan Ghosh, general secretary of regional travel trade body Eastern Himalayas Travel and Tour Operators’ Association. “Surprisingly, they’re also luring customers to pay in advance while knocking off the goods and services tax charge,” Ghosh said. In India, the goods and services tax on hotels range anywhere between 12-18 percent, depending on the pricing. Customers, while trying to book hotels online for Darjeeling, have been duped to pay advance amounts to bank accounts which don’t belong to the owners of the accommodations. “We’re in touch with the cyber cell department to track such incidents closely and take action accordingly,” Ghosh added. 

Elizabeth Stenne’s career painting bespoke pieces of art for some of the world’s most luxurious hotels spans more than three decades.

Lagardère Travel Retail has launched its first completely autonomous store, Travelwell, at Hong Kong International Airport.

Outbound travel from mainland China during the Labor Day holiday period reached a three-year high this year, according to data released by travel technology company Travelport.

Hundreds of thousands of mainland Chinese visitors have descended on the world’s biggest gambling hub of Macau for the Labour Day holiday, packing tightly into its narrow cobblestone streets and placing bets in its glitzy casinos.

Hong Kong’s March retail sales rose 40.9 percent from a year earlier, the second biggest percentage rise on record, as consumer and visitor spending continued to improve, though the low base of comparison also contributed, government data showed on Thursday.

Here are some excerpts from Daily Lodging Report from the past week. If you’re not a subscriber, you should be. Get news on hotel deals, development, stocks, and career moves. Sign up here, now.

China’s three-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday that concluded Saturday showed a noticeable revival in outbound travel, as evidenced by the increasing number of border crossings.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Monday, June 26. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

For most young adults, moving out of home is a rite of passage but in Hong Kong – notorious for its chronic lack of housing – it’s usually an unaffordable dream.

Chinese airlines have upped the number of weekly flights to Spain by more than five times since the end of China’s zero-COVID policy in December, filling most of the gap left by European rivals due to a ban on flying over Russia.

The post-pandemic travel boom and the high ticket prices that come with it show no signs of slowing well into next year, despite economic uncertainty and dwindling household savings.

Skift Research’s Travel Health Index continued to track above 2019 levels in July, with a 2 point increase from July 2019, according to our latest monthly update.