Hong Kong Sunday received the first 32 groups of 1,000 tourists from neighboring Guangdong Province arranged by travel agencies after WHO lifted its travel advisory against Hong Kong on May 23.
Since WHO issued the travel advisory on April 2, travel agencies in the Chinese mainland and overseas suspended tour services to Hong Kong.
Hong Kong has already worked out a health guideline for receiving visitors from Guangdong, according to a press release from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government Saturday.
The Tourism Commission, the Department of Health, and the travel trade, including the Hong Kong Tourism Board and the Travel Industry Council, have jointly issued the necessary hygiene measures.
To ensure the health of tourists, tourist guides have all received special training and they will measure body temperatures for tourists every morning and guarantee that tourists have hygiene food.
The tourist buses are all equipped with thermometers, masks for tourists. The buses would have thorough cleansing every day and fresh air supplying systems of the buses would be checked regularly.
A hotline has already opened for offering help to tourists or tourist guides who have fever and other suspected symptom, in an effort to prevent the spreading of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
Hong Kong's tourism, hotels, restaurants and retail industry are heavily hit by SARS in the past two months.
Now, however, Hong Kong has kept daily SARS new cases in single digits for 29 days in a row.
The Hong Kong tourism industry estimated that about 100,000 Guangdong people are expected to visit Hong Kong in June and the tourism industry would fully resume normal business in October.
