iPhone craze to spur mainland-HK tourism: report

The mainland craze for iPhones is set to stimulate increased travel to Hong Kong during the National Day "Golden Week" holiday, surging by around eight percent, a Hong Kong newspaper said, citing a local tourism expert.

Michael Wu Siu-ying, chairman of the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong, told Ming Pao the new Apple smartphone would add to the special administrative region's luster. The main target of many individual tourists would be the iPhone 6, which has not been legally available on the mainland, he said.

Wu expects the number of mainland visitors to Hong Kong would reach 1.1 million during the upcoming holidays, an eight percent increase over last year.

The council's executive director Joseph Tung estimated that mainland tour groups would increase 10 percent to more than 220 each day on average.

Ming Pao, calling the China International Travel Service hotline last week, found that four-day group tours from Shanghai had sold out and only a few vacant seats were left on the four-day group tour from Beijing, which costs more than 7,000 yuan ($1,141).

Hong Kong attracted 1.02 million mainland tourists during the previous National Day holiday, an increase of only 5.6 percent over 2012, due to stricter rules applied to travel agencies.

A new law, approved in April last year and effective in October, banned unreasonably cheap tours at prices that failed to cover costs such as airline tickets and accommodation, with the shortfall compensated for via forced shopping.

However, Ricky Tse, chairman of the Hong Kong Inbound Tour Operators Association, said several days ago that the number of mainland tours during the holiday might decrease by 20 to 30 percent compared with 2013.

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