Hong Kong will try to entice tourists back to the Asian city by giving away half a million free airline tickets in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hong Kong's Tourism Board says the plan is part of global promotion once the Asian metropolis removes all Covid-19 restrictions on arrivals. The city has only recently started to relax its strict measures to combat the pandemic which have been in place for more than two years.
The South China Morning Post newspaper reported that the ticket giveaway, expected to launch in early 2023, was worth HK$2 billion/€258 million.
“Once the government announces it will remove all Covid-19 restrictions for inbound travellers, we’ll roll out the advertising campaigns for the free air tickets,” Dane Cheng Ting-yat, executive director of the Tourism Board, was quoted as saying.
News of the free tickets, to be distributed by the city's airport authority, comes as Virgin Atlantic announced it would not resume flying between London and Hong Kong due to issues related to the war in the Ukraine. Airlines have been rerouting flights to avoid Ukrainian and Russian airspace.
