April 25: Hong Kong, until last year one of the top choices of Calcuttans wanting to holiday abroad, has become a no-no for thousands of tourists inconvenienced by an automated system of pre-arrival registration that rejects applications online allegedly without assigning any reason.
Since the new system took effect in January, around 3,000 potential visitors have cancelled their flight tickets and hotel bookings mainly because of this reason, according to information provided by several travel operators.
Cathay Dragon, which operates direct flights between Calcutta and Hong Kong, has apparently been affected the most in terms of business with travel plans going haywire. When Metro contacted Cathay Pacific and subsidiary Cathay Dragon for comment, a spokesperson emailed a statement attributed to Rajesh Menon, regional sales & marketing manager for the airline.
"Post the introduction of pre-arrival registration for Indians travelling to Hong Kong, some customers from Calcutta were unable to successfully complete the registration process. Whilst this has had an impact on the overall market to Hong Kong, we are extending all our support to our customers and helping them with the process for their smooth travel," Menon said.
Indians previously did not need visas to enter Hong Kong, a former British colony that became an autonomous administrative region under the People's Republic of China in 1997. From January, visitors to Hong Kong from India have had to fill in pre-arrival registration forms and submit them online for approval. Tour operators and officials of airlines said most applications from Calcutta were getting rejected with a one-word intimation: "Unsuccessful".
Businessman Aman Chopra, his teacher wife Simran and their two children were to go on a nine-day vacation to Hong Kong and Macau from May 24. A two-night stay at Disneyland Hong Kong was to be the highlight of the holiday for this family of four.
They booked return tickets on Thai Airways, only for the trip to hit a hurdle during the pre-arrival online registration. Aman and Simran had their applications rejected even as their sons Aryaveer, 10, and Shaurya, 3, received the computerised system's nod.
"I have tried registering at least 10 times since, but every time the response is 'unsuccessful'. There is no reason that I know of for the rejection. My sons were so excited to visit Disneyland, but now it looks impossible," rued Simran.
The Chopras, who have visited five countries in three years, have decided to drop the idea of going to Hong Kong rather than try their luck with manual visa processing. They have suffered a financial loss of Rs 1.5 lakh by way of various cancellation charges. "It would take four to six weeks for a normal visa process to be completed; so we better plan on going to some other destination," Simran said.
Prakash Pal, a resident of Tollygunge, had planned a holiday in Hong Kong and Macau with wife Sarmistha and daughter Pramita from April 28.
A couple of weeks ago, Prakash and Sarmistha cleared the pre-arrival registration process but their daughter did not. They do not have a clue on what grounds her application was rejected. "How can we go without our daughter? Four years ago, we had visited Hong Kong and there was no such trouble," Prakash said.
Calling Hong Kong's immigration helpline is of no help, say those who have tried and failed.
A source in the Hong Kong Tourism Board said all pre-arrival registration forms were being processed automatically without any manual scanning of data submitted by the applicants. "If the system finds that a traveller needs to provide more data and documents, then the application gets rejected and one has to apply for a visa," he said, insisting that the spate of rejections was not specific to Calcutta.
People who had planned to travel in groups account for the bulk of the cancellations. While some of them did clear the pre-arrival registration process, one or more rejections in the same group forced them to cancel the trips.
Once an application is rejected, a traveller is free to apply for a visa. The hitch is the time it would take for a visa to be issued since Hong Kong does not yet have a visa processing office in India, sources said.
For travel operators, Hong Kong going off the potential tourist's radar is a big loss. "Hong Kong was always one of the more popular foreign holiday destinations accessible from Calcutta because you did not need a visa. People could make last-minute travel plans and we would make bookings for leisure travellers on weekends throughout the year," said Anil Punjabi, chairman (east) of the Travel Agents' Federation of India. "Since January, there has been a significant drop in travel to Hong Kong. We have written to the Hong Kong Tourism Board, but little has changed."
According to Punjabi, about 500 people would fly to Hong Kong from Calcutta every week before the change in entry rules.
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