HONG KONG: The local travel agency Wing On Travel aims to tap into the children's market as the economic recession erodes travel plans for people at all economic levels.

Wing On Travel is launching a Family Travel Series to enable parents and children to travel together. The plan evolved after the Hong Kong Education Bureau announced its new educational structure, adding arts, physics, citizenship and moral education into the current curriculum, all of which call for practical experience.

The Family Series aims to boost summer peak travel, which according to the company accounts for over 15 percent of its annual revenue.

"July and August are the golden months for tourism," said Jo Jo Chan, the company's general manager, "it's even more important than the Christmas and New Year holidays because the summer vacation is longer."

"We hope to attract more children and students in the coming summer," she added.

In the meantime, according to the Hong Kong Tourism Board, visitor arrivals in April reached 2,439,490, a slight rise of 0.8 percent over the same period last year. Individually, tourists are tending to short-haul tours which are less costly. The Tourism Board said in its statement long-haul travels continued to drop in April owing to battered consumer confidence resulting from the financial crisis which began in the last quarter of 2008.

Aside from entering new territory in the consumer market, the company is also expending onto the mainland. Wing On travel set up its first mainland branch in Hunan province last year as the first wholly Hong Kong-invested travel agency in the province.

"As the mainland is gradually opening up its tourism market, we expect to seek more opportunities there," the manager said, "the tourism market in Hong Kong is already saturated."

"More than 10 percent of our customers are using Hong Kong as a transit station," the manager added.

(HK Edition 05/26/2009 page1)