VISITBRITAIN’s marketing efforts in Hong Kong have been incorporated into the NTO’s greater China operations, as part of a restructuring that saw its long-serving manager for Hong Kong & South China, Jane Fong, leave in September.
Fong, who had worked for VisitBritain for about 22 years, is now on an extended sabbatical.
At the moment, VisitBritain’s footprint in Hong Kong consists of a representative who reports directly to its manager for China and Hong Kong, Travis Qian, who is based in Shanghai.
“Hong Kong is now incorporated fully into the China market, and is supported not only by our Hong Kong and South China representative, but also the wider China team in Beijing and Shanghai,” Qian explained.
“Though the size of our team physically based in Hong Kong may have been reduced, we have a bigger budget, and we (the whole of China team) are working closely with our airline partner and public diplomacy partners to gear up our marketing efforts under the GREAT campaign in China (including Hong Kong).”
The NTO hosted last week a group of 32 organisations and 75 travel experts from the UK on a trade mission to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong (TTG Asia e-Daily, December 2).
Meanwhile, VisitBritain is looking forward to plans by Hong Kong Airlines to launch Hong Kong-London (Gatwick) services in March and Air China to start Beijing-London (Gatwick) services in May.
VisitBritain strategy & communications director, Patricia Yates, said: “This will help enormously (with alleviating concerns about air lift). The more connections the UK has with China, the better, because at Heathrow it is now nearly impossible to give slots away.”
