HKTB flexes its muscles

HONG Kong is ensuring it continues passing the global tourism powerhouse longevity test with the Hong Kong Tourism Board(HKTB)’s eight-point initiative programme.

HKTB executive director, Anthony Lau,said that while some aspects covered by initiatives are already strong, there is still room for improvement. At the same time,he acknowledged that others might provide challenges but that they have the patience to learn and perfect the implementation within a period of two years.

High-yield business events has been recognised as a priority segment of the HongKong government, which has allocated HKTB HK$150 million (US$19.3 million) over the next five years to enhance the destination’s appeal as an international convention and exhibition capital. Lau said its campaign will run as Meetings & Exhibitions Hong Kong(MEHK) with strategic focuses on providing one-stop support, offering value-added products and services, and strengthening destination branding.

HKTB is setting up a dedicated team for MEHK.

Of the “Live it. Love it!” campaign and enhancing the destination’s image, Lau said, “It is working well for us. It says what we want to say. Let us not re-invent the wheels. Let us strengthen it. Let us give more dimensions to it. So we will be looking at a series of new executions, something to hype up the unique image of Hong Kong.”

Building a “win-win partnership” also figures prominently in HKTB’s 2008 priorities. “Building partnership - I think wetalk about it all the time. I think this is theyear when we need to put it into action,” he said, stressing that the partnership extends not only to the travel trade but to the rest of stakeholders.

“How we can benefit and develop a winwin relationship? It is not a one-year process.I think we need to start somewhere. We will make some mistakes along the way but I think it is important for Hong Kong tourism industry to have all stakeholders working together,” he said.

Hong Kong Inbound Travel Association Ltd (HKITA) chair, Herman Lam, said that HKTB is going a good job in promoting thedestination in terms of advertising, road participating in trade shows. He said that at present, Hong Kong travel agents already enjoy a good relationship with the tourism board.

But how to develop it further into a winwin situation? Lam said that all the agents –big or small – should be given the opportunity to join HKTB’s overseas selling missions,which are effective business platforms, and this would only be possible if the participation costs are cut. He said that the current rates discourage SMEs from joining, which in turn,put a cap in their business potential.

“If they lower the fares, there is a very good chance for small agents to join and explore the market. That is how to get awin-win relationship,” Lam said. “…If they really want ‘win-win’, there should be more small agents in the delegation. At present,everybody is so familiar with each other and there are no new-comers. We need newcomers to share the market and provide us more competition,” he said, alluding to the business credo that competition is always good for the market.

Lau said HKTB values the feedback of Hong Kong’s tourism stakeholders,and accommodates their inputs before programmes are finalised.A revamp of the HKTB website will be implemented as part of enhancing HongKong’s image. The aim, he said, is to make people start talking about it. “We need people to come into it and have fun and leave with an impression when they go out...Put more dimensions to it and give more dimensions to Hong Kong to really build astory on everything that we want to sell. This is pretty straight-forward but I think it needs a lot of work,” he said.

The trust to provide more dimensions toHong Kong extends to products as well. Lau said that, for instance, shopping alone would not be hogging the limelight in the summer campaign. So while in the past it was the perennial Shopping Festival campaign, this summer campaign will drumbeat a blend of shopping, gourmet and cultural events promotion.

“What we want to do this year is to put everything together… to come with a big summer campaign,” he said, adding that it will need lot of mechanisms in place because of the “major exercise in cross-selling” that links travel trade, transportation system together with retail companies. He doesn’t expect everything to go smoothly during the maiden year. “We will try and of course, in the next couple of years, we will get better,”he said.

Other new products that will be rolled out tap the potential of young tourists. Lau said that among those that Hong Kong has to strengthen are the education-cumentertainment products, which will have programmes for children and teeners.

The first programme targets children.“The concept is during holiday time for these six- to 12-year olds who still need to travel with their parents to come to Hong Kong.They learn English, and at the same time, they spend four to five days in different theme parks and there will be English teachers togo with the group. They can learn English and enjoy the theme parks while the parents cando shopping,” he said.

“The other group would be the older age group – the teen group, kids who can travel on their own. And they come here to Hong Kong to attend courses. So we are talking to a couple of tertiary education to see whether we can arrange for them to come over and stay at their hostels. It is almost like those high school outings,” he said.

This programme is more complicated because of the accommodation arrangements. “It seems like there is a problem because people do not like to move out,” he said, laughing.

HKTB is also reviewing perennial events its pearheads, including the Chinese New Year Parade, Winterfest and the New Year’s Eve Countdown.

Feedback from the travel trade as well as ordinary citizens indicated that the Chinese New Year Parade is much valued. Moving from this point, he said, “I think the challenge is not whether we will continue to have the parade but on how we can capitalise on the whole CNY festival here. I think quite likely we are going to keep it…I think it is an iconicevent for Hong Kong. But the challenge ishow to make the CNY period better rather than just talking about the CNY Parade.”

On enhancing quality services, he said that beginning next year, they will be aggressively pushing the Quality Tourism Services (QTS) scheme to areas outside of the Golden Triangle, which is composed of Tsim Sha Tsui, Causeway Bay, Wanchai and Central, where most of the QTS-member establishments are located.

“What we see is that there are more hotels going in the fringe areas. We have hotels in Prince Edward, Tsuen Wan, and Kowloon City. So our mandate for next year is really whenever there is a hotel, we have to define a certain geographic area and we will focus to build the pool of QTS outlets inthat area to make sure that our tourists are treated well,” Lau said.