Local tour groups are relaxed, economy and epidemic prevention need to be balanced

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Written by: Commentary Editing Room

2020-10-22 06:30

Last update date: 2020-10-22 06:30

The latest unemployment rate announced by the government on Tuesday (20th) rose by 0.3% to 6.4%. The consumption and tourism industries that have been more affected by the epidemic have worsened the situation. The unemployment rate has risen by 0.8% to 11.7%.

At this time, the epidemic is under control, and the number of new local confirmed cases per day is only single digits. The authorities have relaxed restrictions on local travel, which is understandable by the society.

But at the same time, how to balance the need for restarting the tourism economy and epidemic prevention, and ensuring that the requirements put forward by the authorities are feasible, are also issues that must be paid attention to.

The Executive Council passed on Tuesday amending the "Prevention and Control of Disease (Prohibition of Group Gathering) Regulations", which will relax the maximum number of tour groups to 30 from Friday (23).

In order to stimulate local consumption and tourism, the Tourism Board also announced the details of the "Travel in Hong Kong" event.

While subsidizing local tours of travel agencies, the Tourism Board has a number of epidemic prevention requirements for participating travel agencies, including purchasing health insurance and registering contact information for passengers, conducting temperature checks for group members, and ensuring that group members must wear masks and transportation seats outside of meal times The upper limit is half and you can't eat in transportation, etc.

Travel agencies participating in the plan are required to register their itinerary with the Travel Industry Council and sign the "Local Travel Anti-epidemic Commitment."

Once a travel agency is found to be in violation of the regulations by the Tourism Industry Council, the registration of the travel agency concerned can be cancelled and no funding can be obtained.

Epidemic prevention measures must be feasible

For example, passengers are not allowed to eat in the car and must wear masks throughout the meal time. These are indeed reasonable requirements, but tour guides may not guarantee that the behavior of passengers is regulated.

Therefore, for this possibility, the Travel Council should have more detailed and feasible regulations.

For example, it is difficult for the Travel Council to send employees to monitor the behavior of the tour group.

Therefore, once there are unruly tourists, it is not the disqualification of the tour guide, but the tour guide or other tourists can complain to the Travel Council to warn and punish the illegal tourists, or more deterrent.

The industry and the Tourism Board must have more detailed planning for various situations in order to avoid local travel as a gap for the rebound of the epidemic.

In addition, the authorities require travel agencies to purchase health insurance for non-travelers, originally to strengthen tourists' confidence, but some travel agency officials are worried that insurance coverage for new coronary pneumonia will increase the tour fee.

In this regard, the government can consider negotiating with insurance companies on behalf of the industry on travel insurance covering the new crown virus, or granting certain subsidies, so that tourists can rest assured and travel agencies will not worry too much about the cost.

Some small food shops pointed out that the number of local tourists on Sundays has recently increased, and business is showing signs of picking up.

(Photo by Ouyang Dehao)

Although there were new cases of unknown origin in the past week, it shows that the community still has an invisible transmission chain.

However, the overall epidemic in Hong Kong has eased a lot. In the past week, there were only 12 local confirmed cases and no new cluster outbreaks.

In addition, it will take a long time to co-exist with the virus before an effective vaccine is available. Sporadic cases in the community cannot be avoided. Hong Kong cannot aim for zero diagnosis for a long time, and guard against death across the board.

The first batch of Chinese tourists with special visas have arrived in Thailand, and both sides hope to restart the tourism economy.

Asia is also actively planning bubble tourism.

Therefore, "rewarding you to visit Hong Kong" is the right direction to balance economic development and epidemic prevention needs.

Just as a new attempt, how to master the best balance point, what difficulties the industry has, and any loopholes in activities can only be crossed by feeling the stones.

In this process, in order to avoid a failure to cause a new wave of social outbreaks, the government and the industry must make the most comprehensive and meticulous preparations, and use the highest vigilance to respond flexibly to changes that may occur at any time.

Tourism under the epidemic and economic development are new directions that all parties in Hong Kong need to work together to explore at this stage.

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