Measure will “appease” residents of Macau, HK
The government of China’s Guangdong Province has reportedly ordered travel agencies to stop offering one-day trips to Hong Kong and Macau on weekends via the new Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, which opened in October. According to the South China Morning Post, the move is designed to reduce pressure on the ports and surrounding areas.
The Guangdong Provincial Culture and Tourism Department has also urged agencies to arrange “quality trips” that last “two days or more.”
Wong Fai, vice president of the Macau Travel Industry Council, told GGRAsia he supports the plan. “I think the order is a good measure in diverting the Mainland visitor crowd in order to ease the pressure on the ports and borders over the weekends or some certain time slots. The measure aims at providing a better travel experience to Mainland Chinese visitors as well as appease the sentiment of local people” in Hong Kong and Macau.
Between October 24 and November 23, the Macau border crossing of the HKZM Bridge handled more than 800,000 travelers, of which nearly 85 percent or 690,000 were traveling to or from Hong Kong, according to Macau’s Public Security Police statistics.
