WTM 2018: Hong Kong offers agent training on city’s neighbourhoods

The Hong Kong Tourism Board has produced new training modules and a range of print and online content promoting four of the city’s neighbourhoods to the trade for the first time.

The tourism board’s focus on boosting individual neighbourhoods has been extended to cover Wan Chai, Kowloon Walled City, West Kowloon and Eastern New Territories, with neighbourhood guides, maps, tips from local ‘personalities’, and suggested self-guided walking tours, which agents can use to learn about the districts or pass on to their clients.

An updated Great Outdoors Hong Kong guide is also set to be published next week, including 14 new hiking and cycling trails.

Dawn Page, director, UK and Northern Europe, said: “What we’re trying to do is really help people discover Hong Kong like a local. We want to give everybody a reason to come back to Hong Kong again and again.

“Over the next two to three years, we’re going to be adding more neighbourhoods [to our programme].

“We have our own trade training programme, and the new neighbourhoods will be incorporated as modules so agents will be able to refer to them.”

The new modules will be available on the Hong Kong travel trade portal, PartnerNet, by early 2019.

The Travel Weekly team is reporting extensively from this year’s World Travel Market, stay up to date on our live blog and event microsite