Walk from home: Hong Kong tour company moves online to survive COVID-19 pandemic
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Walk from home: Hong Kong bout company moves online to survive COVID-19 pandemic
Julianne Chan, 27, joins a virtual tour near compages in Kennedy Town, post-obit the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Hong Kong, China Aug 16, 2020. (REUTERS/Tyrone Siu)
HONG KONG: A Hong Kong tourism company has moved its walking tours online to achieve a travel-starved audience unable to explore new places due to coronavirus restrictions.
The company, Walk in Hong Kong, runs free online tours in Cantonese focussed on local history and civilization, with help from authorities subsidies and private donations. While bookings for its regular in-person tours typically took a calendar week to make full, one recent virtual bout filled 70 spots overnight.
It now plans to run such tours in English for an overseas audition on a permanent basis. It expects to start charging around HK$100 (United states$xiii) per person from next calendar month.
The tours are filmed with a phone and a gimbal and are interactive, with specialist guests such as architects available to answer questions. Eight people are working in two teams, one on the ground, the other interacting with the audition from a studio in between bout stops.
"We are thinking nearly turning it into a program that appeals to overseas guests, for example talking most Hong Kong's history and Hong Kong'south electric current events, to explain what is happening to the city," said managing manager Olivia Tang.
"We can have hundreds of people from all around the world attend at the aforementioned fourth dimension."
Tourism in Hong Kong has been bedridden in the by year offset past pro-democracy protests, so by the pandemic. Many countries have too issued travel advisories afterward Beijing introduced a sweeping national security law last month that tightens the cardinal regime'south grip on Cathay's freest urban center.
Tourist arrivals plummeted 99.7 per cent in June from a year earlier to 14,606.
READ: Commentary: How did Hong Kong get to a tertiary wave of COVID-xix infections?
Julianne Chan, 27, joined a recent tour about architecture in Kennedy Boondocks, the neighbourhood where she grew upwards, after having to abolish a trip to London due to COVID-nineteen.
"During the pandemic ...there's not a lot you can exercise," she said.
"With these constraints, I would still go along a virtual tour, simply if I can choose, I would e'er opt for merely going abroad myself and seeing with my ain eyes."
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/business/hong-kong-virtual-city-tours-covid-19-243766
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