Almost 10 applicants battled for every volunteer visitor host job with the Hong Kong Tourism Board as the city works to improve quality of service.
The board said on Sunday that it had received a record 440 applications for the Hong Kong Pals volunteer programme, which started in 2009, and that only 48 were picked.
The new volunteers came from all walks of life, such as university students, new graduates, lawyers, engineers, school and university staff and civil servants and will take the number of people involved in the programme to 107.
“With their knowledge and skills acquired from different areas, the volunteers can work on the front line … to offer timely, customised travel advice from a local’s point of view, showcasing Hong Kong’s unique spirit of hospitality,” the board’s general manager of corporate affairs Alice Li Wah said.
The volunteers will spend three months training in communications, itinerary planning and photography, along with workshops and guided tours, until October.
The board said they would hit the streets to meet visitors in November alongside existing volunteers.
Leonard Tso, a volunteer who works in the finance industry and speaks fluent Korean, said he hoped his successful bid for a spot on the tourism team would allow him to give visitors an authentic feel for the city and make their visits more memorable.
Each volunteer will have to be committed for at least 10 sessions – a total of 30 hours – during an appointment period.
They will be based at tourist visitor centres at the Tsim Sha Tsui Star Ferry Concourse, the airport, the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal at Ocean Terminal, West Kowloon Station and the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge.
The board said volunteers and frontline visitor service teammates had advised more than 2 million visitors and answered 2.3 million inquiries between April 2023 and March.
The city welcomed 21 million visitors in the first half of the year, a 64 per cent increase over the same period in 2023.
But the figure was just 60 per cent of the 34.8 million tourists recorded in the first six months of 2019.
The Tourism Board launched the “Let’s Go the Extra Mile” hospitality campaign in June in a bid to tackle poor quality service from taxi drivers, retailers and restaurants.
The drive was designed to encourage frontline staff in the industries to be more friendly and welcoming to visitors.
