MR YIU SI-WING (in Cantonese): President, the Chief Executive has presented her second Policy Address in her term of office. Overall, I agree that this Policy Address is more comprehensive than the last one. It has made quite a lot of efforts at livelihood issues such as land development, housing, health care, welfare and education, with forward-looking and practical proposals. In respect of the tourism industry, the Policy Address has also made an elaboration in paragraphs 122 to 124, part of which has accepted the suggestions made by me earlier, thus showing the Government's concern for the tourism industry.

The tourism industry is a burgeoning industry, one of the four significant economic pillars of Hong Kong. In the planning of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area ("the Greater Bay Area"), Hong Kong is one of the key components rich in tourism resources with unique characteristics in the region. Hence, if we can seize the opportunities properly, we will be able to pursue development with such opportunities and seek further opportunities in the course. Take the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge ("HZMB") and the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link ("XRL") which were commissioned in the past months as examples. They are important transport infrastructure projects which can promote Hong Kong's economic link with the Mainland and Macao, strengthen Hong Kong's position as an international metropolis and provide people with convenience. At the same time, they are important tourism resources with significant effects on the development of Hong Kong's tourism industry. Certainly, everything has its merits and demerits. On the first Sunday after the commissioning on 24 October, HZMB was already used by some 70 000 people. On the following Sunday, it even broke the record with some 100 000 users, exceeding our estimation. The main reason is that travel agencies in different cities on the Mainland have recently used HZMB as a selling point, attracting Mainland visitors under the Individual Visit Scheme or in tour groups, thus creating a bandwagon effect. A number of problems were exposed on these two Sundays. They include inadequate frequency of cross-boundary shuttle buses and lack of manpower of the Immigration Department during the peak period, causing visitors to wait for an excessively long time; too many Mainland visitors gathering in Tung Chung, affecting the residents' everyday life; a number of Mainland travel agencies leading tour groups to Hong Kong direct without referring such groups to Hong Kong travel agencies for reception, arousing suspicions of unlicensed operation and unlicensed tourist guides, etc. In this regard, the authorities immediately communicated with the industry and adopted contingency measures, thereby relieving the traffic problem for the moment. Recently, they have also been looking for ways to resolve the other problems. I hope the concerted efforts of various parties will bear fruit, thus preventing Hong Kong's image from being tarnished and pre-empting public grievances.

The Hong Kong Section of XRL, commissioned at the end of September, can help attract overnight visitors with high spending power from cities within the reach of a journey time of three to five hours to Hong Kong. The people of Hong Kong will also have more options when they travel to the Mainland. Recently, heeding the views of the tourism industry, the MTR Corporation Limited has adjusted the arrangements of reservation and issue of tickets, offering greater convenience. Travel agencies will enhance efforts in ticketing, packaging of tourism products and promotion arrangements. As members of the public and visitors understand and know more about XRL, I believe the sales of XRL tickets will gradually rise and reach the expected target. The completion of HZMB and XRL also facilitates the design of more "multi-destination" tourism products by the Hong Kong tourism sector to attract more visitors from overseas, making the sources of visitors to Hong Kong more internationalized. Following the commissioning of the Tuen Mun-Chek Lap Kok Link and completion of the third runway, internal and external sea, land and air transport facilities on Lantau Island will become more comprehensive, playing a more significant role in the economy and tourism industry of Hong Kong.

President, while the tourism industry enjoys a lot of opportunities, it also faces many challenges. Firstly, the opening of the United States-China trade war will definitely affect the global and Mainland economies. A stronger US dollar will weaken visitors' consumer sentiments. We have seen that the recent growth in total retail sales value is far short of expectation. The Hong Kong Tourism Board ("HKTB") anticipates that a sustained trade war will certainly have an adverse impact on the local tourism industry. In the past year, despite the resumption of growth of the tourism industry, the proportion of overseas visitors remained low, accounting for less than 22% of the total number of arrivals from January to September, and overnight visitors accounted for less than 46% of the total. Hence, there are still a lot of things we must do.

Secondly, Hong Kong currently faces challenges from other cities in the region. Take the convention and exhibition ("C&E") industry as an example. Many first-tier Mainland cities have embarked on expanding C&E venues. For example, the C&E space in the National Exhibition and Conference Centre in Shanghai and Phase 1 of the Shenzhen International Convention and Exhibition Center, which will be commissioned in the first quarter of 2019, respectively reach 500 000 sq m. The C&E venues in Guangzhou are also greater in number and size than those in Hong Kong. Hong Kong, on the contrary, has a serious lack of C&E venues. According to information of the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Industry Association, the number of large-scale trade exhibitions and consumer fairs have plateaued in Hong Kong since 2015. In 2017, the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai and AsiaWorld-Expo at the airport turned down 60-odd reservations due to capacity constraints. As pointed out in a consultancy study commissioned by the Government, the average unmet demand for C&E venues in Hong Kong will reach 133 000 sq m by 2028, thus showing immense pressure for such venues in Hong Kong.

Thirdly, regarding the transport problem, in the past, the Hong Kong International Airport was Mainland visitors' first choice for transit to various major overseas cities. Yet the main airports in first-tier Mainland cities have rapidly developed and proactively opened more international routes, directly undermining the role of the Hong Kong airport as a transit point. As shown by information, in 2016, the Beijing Capital International Airport, Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport and the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport provided a total of 341 international routes, more than the 220 provided by Hong Kong. Consequently, the proportion of Mainland visitors in passenger throughput of the Hong Kong airport has dropped in recent years, currently standing only at around 20%. Now the Three Runway System of the Hong Kong International Airport will not come into full service until 2024. In other words, while facing continuous expansion of neighbouring airports, Hong Kong will not be able to resolve the problem of limited aircraft movements until 2024. In the next few years, a number of international flights may give up Hong Kong and fly to other Mainland cities owing to limited aircraft movements at the Hong Kong airport.

Fourthly, regarding tourist attractions, neighbouring cities have proactively developed new projects. For example, new hotels and entertainment venues have been built one after another in Macao over these few years. Ocean Kingdom, a new theme park, has been completed at Hengqin, Zhuhai in recent years. Proactively consolidating its natural resources, Qingyuan, Guangdong will launch projects of forest and wetland parks. Now Hong Kong still mainly relies on traditional tourist spots without any novel large-scale leisure or entertainment projects engaged in the market in recent years, thus failing to enhance its appeal as a tourist city. Moreover, although Hong Kong has injected a lot of resources into conservation of culture, antiquities and monuments, as well as the environment, such resources are under the charge of different government departments. For example, the Development Bureau is responsible for restoration of antiquities and monuments. The Environmental Protection Department is responsible for rural conservation. The Leisure and Cultural Services Department is responsible for country parks, hiking trails, etc. Each of the departments has specific tasks and objectives which mainly focus on conservation, but such efforts in Hong Kong are inadequate in optimizing these precious tourism resources to create a synergy effect. As such, Hong Kong's appeal in tourism will only be deficient.

The tourism industry in Hong Kong is facing various kinds of uncertainties. I hope the Government will, upholding a proactive attitude, continue to support the development of the tourism industry. First of all, I hope the Government will show more care for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises ("MSMEs"). Given the United States-China trade war, we will encounter a series of uncertainties. In addition, now we see that MSMEs are facing such measures as the Mandatory Provident Fund offsetting arrangement, increase in paternity and maternity leave, etc. These measures are beneficial to employees, but I hope the Government can pay more attention to the situation of MSMEs because these measures will have direct impacts on them. I hope that in the Budget which will be presented shortly, the Government will roll out more relief measures for MSMEs (including the tourism sector), such as waiver of licence fees, increase in subsidy, etc.

As regards C&E venues mentioned by me just now, I expect the Government to expedite the redevelopment of the sites of the three government towers in Wan Chai North and the fire station on Harbour Road, so as to increase the supply of C&E and hotel sites. As the Airport Authority Hong Kong has successfully acquired the private stake in AsiaWorld-Expo, the Government should expedite the study on the development of Phase 2 of AsiaWorld-Expo to complement HZMB so that it can bring us more opportunities in the future.

In respect of airport services, I hope that before the completion of the third runway, the Government will, on the premise of ensuring aviation safety, appropriately increase the number of aircraft movements and parking stands at the Hong Kong International Airport so as to meet the demands of airlines as far as possible. At the same time, it should freeze the aircraft parking charges in order to encourage more airlines to establish base in Hong Kong.

Regarding the promotion of cultural, green and eco-tourism, since HZMB and the Hong Kong Section of XRL have successively come into service, quite a number of Mainland visitors have revisited Hong Kong. This time we saw that many Guangdong visitors went to Tung Chung from HZMB and then headed back. Since they had been to Hong Kong before and considered that there were not too many interesting places in Hong Kong, they left on the same day. We can provide them with different choices of in-depth tours. In my view, this is worthy of thorough consideration and promotion.

I have recently visited Sham Shui Po. The person-in-charge of a soybean product factory told me that since the commissioning of the two major infrastructural facilities, coupled with the promotion by HKTB, an increasing number of Mainland and overseas visitors have been attracted, thereby rejuvenating the lethargic old areas in Sham Shui Po and bringing a lot of business to the small stalls. Hence, if Hong Kong can capitalize on its uniqueness in local culture, green tourism and eco-tourism, it will absolutely be able to increase the tourism elements and effectively divert visitors with different needs. However, as I said just now, these resources, under the charge of different Policy Bureaux, cannot bring forth any synergy effect. If we solely depend on the efforts of an individual Policy Bureau, for example, the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau, I think such efforts will be ineffective. For this reason, I hope the Government can, as it did last year, continue to assign the Financial Secretary to convene a high-level tourism coordination meeting to coordinate the resources on various fronts, examine how best to enhance Hong Kong's tourism competitiveness in the region, and at the same time launch competitive and appealing projects through inter-departmental collaboration. I hope the authorities can listen more to the views of the tourism sector, foster and maintain Hong Kong's competitiveness in the region more effectively, and introduce tourism products with special features.

While traditional tourist attractions are losing their edge, I agree that the Government should embark on planning reclamation at Sunny Bay. It should also optimize the use of the Kai Tak Tourism Node and the Phase 2 site of Hong Kong Disneyland to develop landmark tourist attractions with greater characteristics. What I said just now are existing projects, but we also should provide more novel leisure and entertainment facilities with additional elements like other places. The Hong Kong Ocean Park ("Ocean Park") already has a history of 41 years. Facing competition from similar theme parks in the region, it inevitably gives people an impression of ageing. I hope the Government will support Ocean Park―a funding of $300 million was proposed in this financial year, but I do not think this is sufficient to resolve the problem of Ocean Park giving people such an impression. For this reason, I hope that Ocean Park can be replanned and repositioned, and the Government will allocate more resources to conducting a preliminary study to enable the old park to display new charms.

As the two infrastructural facilities, namely, XRL and HZMB, have been commissioned and the Liantang/Heung Yuen Wai Boundary Control Point will be completed soon, we can say that opportunities abound in Hong Kong. With regard to raising the proportion of overseas visitors, the Government should strengthen cooperation with Guangdong and Macao, and formulate preferential policies under the concept of the Greater Bay Area. Such policies include providing visa-free access and special passageways for tour groups, and proactively promoting "multi-destination" tourism through such an edge. I am very glad to see that recently, in the "Hong Kong Week" hosted by the Special Administrative Region ("SAR") Government in Tokyo, HKTB promoted the unique travel experience of "multi-destination" tourism in the hope of attracting more Japanese to travel to Hong Kong. This should be a good initiative, but strangely, the opposition camp unreasonably accused the SAR Government of "boot-licking" and betraying the interests of Hongkongers. Such work was originally conducive to the economy and tourism industry of Hong Kong. Moreover, the "multi-destination" tourism product has already been launched for 10-odd years. Yet it was unreasonably politicized. In my view, even if the opposition camp wishes to piggyback on something, they should see clearly what is actually happening. They should not piggyback on anything at will. Such an act is detrimental to the tourism industry and economy of Hong Kong.

President, the Policy Address mentioned the wish for the Legislative Council to pass the Travel Industry Bill in the near future. I am the Chairman of the Bills Committee concerned. After the hard work of one and a half years and a total of 19 meetings, the scrutiny work of the Bills Committee has been completed. Once the Bill is read the Third time and passed by the Legislative Council, the proposal of establishing a Travel Industry Authority ("TIA") can be implemented to perfect the regulatory regime for travel agencies and further protect consumers. The Government has proposed the establishment of TIA in response to public aspirations and those of the tourism sector. I believe the majority of travel agencies in Hong Kong are law-abiding, compliant with rules and regulations. They certainly support the Government's reasonable regulation in accordance with the law. However, now we see that the authorities only focus on regulating licensed operators, but they have not made their best effort to combat unlicensed travel agencies, guesthouses, tourist guides, etc. We find this disappointing. At present, the Travel Agents Registry is the licensing authority for travel agencies, but without any law enforcement power, it can only refer the relevant intelligence to the Police for follow-up, thereby affecting efficiency. Among the suspected cases referred by the Registry to the Police for investigation in the past several years, there were very few convictions, accounting for only 5% of the total number of complaints. We hope that upon establishment, TIA can have a dedicated enforcement team well versed in the relevant laws to turn around the existing passive situation, imposing heavier penalties on unlicensed travel agencies and tourist guides and eliminating unscrupulous operation.

Coincidentally, to protect the legitimate rights and interests of hotels and licensed guesthouses, reduce the impact of unlicensed guesthouses on residential units and ensure the safety of visitors staying in guesthouses, the Government has just introduced a proposal for amending the existing Hotel and Guesthouse Accommodation Ordinance, with a view to enhancing the regulation of guesthouses. The Bills Committee on Hotel and Guesthouse Accommodation (Amendment) Bill 2018 just held its first meeting this Tuesday. I hope that with the efforts of members of the Bills Committee, the Bill will be passed smoothly so that the regulation of the whole tourism industry in Hong Kong can achieve further development.

President, I so submit.