Passengers take G6551, the first high-speed train from Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, as Hong Kong's high-speed rail link to Guangzhou resumes services on January 15, 2023, after three years of border closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo: VCG

Hong Kong officials, industry representatives and residents applauded the latest announcement of full resumption of cross-border travel between the special administrative region (SAR) and the Chinese mainland with a palpable excitement that was widely shared on Friday. The city's full-scale recovery is now in sight, and will be boosted by not only tourists from the mainland but also the integration into the country's overall development, particularly the Greater Bay Area plan, industry insiders said.

China will scrap quota limitations on personnel exchanges between the mainland and Hong Kong and Macao SARs, and allow group tours starting from February 6 to fully resume personnel exchanges, the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council announced on Friday.

People entering the mainland from the Hong Kong and Macao SARs who have no travel history in a foreign country or other overseas regions within seven days will not need to present negative COVID-19 nucleic acid test results.

After the mainland authority announced the full resumption of people-to-people exchanges between the mainland and the SARs, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee announced the scrapping of nucleic acid test requirements and the reopening of three land ports - Luohu, Liantang and Huanggang - starting from February 6. The port of Sha Tau Kok will also resume cargo services.

Also starting from February 6, travel agencies across the country will resume tour group travel to the two SARs and flight-hotel package deals following the full resumption of cross-border travel, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced on Friday.

"Hong Kong's resumption of cross-border travel with the mainland is the key step for the city to fully return to normalcy, and will be conducive to its recovery in economy and social livelihood and to regaining its status as the bridge connecting the mainland and the world," Lau Siu-kai, a consultant from the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies who is also a senior policy advisor, told the Global Times on Friday. 

Hong Kong's economy in the fourth quarter of 2022 decreased 4.2 percent year-on-year, and shrank 3.5 percent for 2022 as a whole due to the sharp deterioration in the external environment and the fifth wave of the local epidemic, according to the local authority.

Looking ahead, the Hong Kong economy is expected to show a recovery in 2023 thanks to an expected faster growth in the mainland economy and relaxation of cross-border movement restrictions, the HKSAR government said. 

"I believe the city's full reopening to the mainland will be the most important step for our industrial recovery, as before the epidemic, about 78 percent of incoming visitors were from the mainland," tourism lawmaker Perry Yiu Pak-leung told the Global Times on Friday. 

Although Hong Kong SAR had first resumed cross-border travel with other countries, this sector has been recovering relatively slowly, to about 30 to 40 percent of the pre-epidemic level, due to the limited number of planes, geopolitical factors and resurgence of the epidemic, Yiu said. "Full resumption of cross-border travel with the mainland will be an absolute boost to Hong Kong's tourism," he added. 

With the launch of the Hello Hong Kong campaign on Thursday, 500,000 air tickets will be given away to boost the tourism sector starting from March and over the next six months, Lee said at an event. This is also part of the HK$2 billion ($255 million) relief package that the government provided to airlines in 2020, according to media reports. 

Macao SAR also announced it was giving away 120,000 air tickets to mainland, the Taiwan island and overseas in 2023, while local authorities came up with various tourism packages to attract more visitors to the city.

Hong Kong Photo: VCG

The "long-frozen" Hong Kong tourism industry finally saw light at the end of the tunnel after the announcement of the full resumption of people-to-people exchanges, Liang Haiming, president of Belt and Road Research Institute of Hainan University told the Global Times on Friday.

The city's tourism sector stands to benefit the most from the resumption, as at least one-third of local travel agencies' business comes from the mainland, and these agencies can boost their business by at least one-third after full resumption, Liang said.

Shortly after the announcement of the full-scale resumption of cross-border travel, the search volume for air tickets between the mainland and Hong Kong increased sevenfold in half an hour, according to travel agency Qunar.com.

"We expect that local tourism will recover to about 50 percent of the pre-epidemic level in 2023, but it also depends on the recovery of airlines. People-to-people exchanges will first resume in the Greater Bay Area and this recovery will further boost exchanges between other cities and Hong Kong," Yiu said. 

The unprecedented social turmoil in 2019 and three-year pandemic since the beginning of 2020 have slowed down the city's integration into the country's overall development plan. Now, the resumption of cross-border travel between the mainland and Hong Kong has also signaled a new start for this integration, observers said. 

"It's also conducive to improving the mutual understanding between the people on both sides, advancing national education in Hong Kong and increasing the confidence of Hong Kong residents in the city's future," Lau said. 

Also on Friday, Chief Executive of Macao SAR, Ho Iat Seng, led a delegation to Guangzhou to meet with Guangdong provincial officials to further deepen cooperation between Guangdong and Macao, the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and the Guangdong-Macao in-depth cooperation zone in Hengqin.

"With the border reopening, recovery in the Greater Bay Area is in sight, which will further boost the [two SARs'] interaction with other Chinese cities," Yiu said.