Tourist arrivals from the Middle East to Hong Kong posted a strong 28.7 per cent growth last year over 1999, with arrivals from the UAE soaring by a whopping 80 per cent.

Since the September 11 attacks in the US however, tourism to the Chinese territory has slumped sharply. But this sharp fall has been cushioned somewhat by continuing growth from the Chinese Mainland. From the Middle East and Europe too, the fall has been more modest at 2.7 per cent.

The Hong Kong Tourism Board is pursuing a two-fold strategy to aid recovery of the travel market, Sue Whitehead, the board's representative in London, tells TTN.

Q. The tourism board in its press release dated October 23 has said there has been a moderate fall of 2.1 per cent in visitor arrivals in Hong Kong since the events of September 11 thanks to arrivals from mainland China. Looking ahead, does the board expect a recovery in the near term and what measures, if any, are planned to aid such recovery?

A. The timing and speed of the recovery will clearly depend to a great extent on world events over which we have no control.

In the meantime, our strategy is twofold: We continue to work with trade partners in tactical areas to maintain market presence and market share; and we are remaining flexible with our funding to support markets of strength and to return quickly and actively to other markets when consumer confidence is fully restored.

Q. Which is your target market in the Middle East? From what area of the region have you seen the maximum number of arrivals? Could you provide figures of Middle East and Gulf tourist arrivals over the past two years?

A. For 2000, the last full year for which we have figures, our total Middle East arrivals were 81,108 which represented a growth of 28.7 per cent over 1999. Our biggest markets in the region were Israel, Turkey, UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Our biggest percentage growth was from the UAE at nearly 80 per cent growth.

The year 2000 was a record-breaking year for Hong Kong tourism. We welcomed over 13 million visitors, an increase of 15.3 per cent over the previous year, comfortably beating the previous record of 12.97 million visitors in pre-handover year, 1996.

These numbers took Hong Kong to 14th place in the WTO's overall rankings of world tourism arrivals - and Hong Kong was the only city destination in the top 15 ... all the others being countries.

Q. What new projects are currently underway to promote tourism? And have you seen an increase in tourist figures as a result of promotional campaigns undertaken by you over the past few years?

A. In April this year we launched a two year programme named "City of Life - Hong Kong is it"!.

The aim of this programme is threefold: