At the Gateway
Venerable Chinese port, Hong Kong, makes a good destination for a first-time experience in Asia.
By Rowland Stiteler
JASON ALTMAN KNEW HE HAD HIS WORK CUT OUT FOR HIM when he sat down last year with a client from a major U.S. food distribution company to plan a reward trip for 180 grocery store owners and operators on the East Coast.
“These incentive attendees were well-traveled, sophisticated people who had been all over the world, and the client wanted to be sure this would be a memorial trip for all of them,” said Altman, an account executive for Chicago-based Landmark Incentive Marketing.
The group had some very specific desires: They wanted to visit Asia, and they wanted to experience another culture—but not beyond their own individual comfort levels. After some extensive research that included site visits to multiple south Asian destinations, Altman and his client concluded that Hong Kong was exactly the right choice.
“Hong Kong is a great place for a first experience in Asia,” Altman said. “It was just right for our group. They could experience and explore Asian culture, but do so in a destination that was Western in its outlook, with luxurious hotels, great restaurants and shopping and safe streets with English widely spoken.”
It didn’t hurt that Hong Kong is easy on the eyes, he says, with glimmering skyscrapers set against the mountains that surround Victoria Bay, a busy harbor that has turned the city into one of the world’s commerce capitals.
“Hong Kong offers wonderful vistas,” said Pearl Markarian, president of Landmark, who accompanied the incentive group on the trip.
In fact, the itinerary relied on a lot of those vistas to offer a striking view everywhere attendees went. Their hotel was the Shangri-La Kowloon, where the windows of guest rooms offer looks at Hong Kong Island—and its mountains and skyscrapers and laser light shows—just across Victoria Bay. There was also a trip on the tramway up Victoria Peak, which offers a panoramic view of the city and the bay below, as well as a summit restaurant where the group had a dinner event. They also experienced a sampan ride on the bay and dined at popular venue Top Deck at the Jumbo, a massive floating restaurant tethered at a pier near the hotel.
At the end of the four-day visit, the group headed to Lantau Island, where the airport is located, for a ride on the Ngong Ping Skyrail, a 3.5-mile, 24-minute trip that affords views of the mountains that tower over the bay as well as Big Buddha, the world’s largest, seated bronze Buddha statue. The Buddha is found at the Po Ling Monastery, set on a mountain plateau near the village of Ngong Ping, itself about 1,700 feet above the bay.
Altman says the group also took a scenic trip across the bay on a high-speed hydrofoil ferry to the Las Vegas of the Orient, Macau, a former Portuguese colony that has become a trendy nightlife and entertainment mecca, offering casino gambling, which is illegal in Hong Kong.
While the group enjoyed all the vistas from the mountains and the skyscrapers overlooking the bay, they also availed themselves of one subterranean pleasure, the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway, the highly efficient subway system that easily whisks riders around the city for self-guided sight-seeing and shopping trips.
Altman says the total package of the incentive attendee’s experience was enhanced by Hong Kong’s location (there was a pre-Hong Kong trip to Singapore and an after trip to the Chinese Sanya Island, a developing beach and golf destination with a new Ritz-Carlton.) And the incentive reward aspect of the trip was also burnished by the world-class brand of Hong Kong.
“It definitely has the cache of a first-tier international destination,” he said.
The city’s factually based image as both an international business city and a gateway to doing business in China also proves attractive to incentive groups, business events and even association meetings, according to James LaValle, Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) manager for conventions, exhibitions and corporate events.
“In these economic times when people are looking at how others may view their choices of destinations for corporate events, we bring a lot of assets to the picture because with 500 world headquarters of corporations based in Hong Kong, we are clearly a business city, and we also know how to do business with China and can offer helping for a business in gaining a foothold there, which basically most every international business in the world wants to do,” LaValle said. One+
ROWLAND STITELER writes about the meeting and event industry from his home in Florida.
What’s New in Hong Kong
• The Hyatt Regency Tsimshatsui, with 382 guest rooms and a 38,000 square-foot ballroom, opened in October on the Kowloon Peninsula. In addition to the ballroom, the new hotel offers five smaller meeting rooms, which can handle up to 90 people each. The hotel’s main restaurant, Hugo’s, serves traditional European cuisine.
• The former Hotel Miramar reopened in October after a US$65 million renovation as the re-branded Hotel Mira in the Tsimshatsui neighborhood, known for its shopping, entertainment and dining venues. The 480-room hotel, has a conference center with a 10,000-square-foot ballroom and three new restaurants. The hotel offers a local cell phone for each guest tied into the hotel switchboard system, so in-bound calls can be connected to guests’ mobile phones anywhere in Hong Kong.
• Harbour Grand Hong Kong, an 838-room, 41-story, five-star hotel opened in June, adjacent to Causeway Bay and the Wan Chai District. The hotel offers about 8,000 square feet of meeting space, including a 6,200-square-foot ballroom.
Transportation Tip
• One of the most efficient and inexpensive ways to get from Hong Kong International Airport to the central business districts of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island is also a scenic tourism experience. A trip on the Hong Kong Airport Express rail costs the equivalent of about US$12 and follows a route that offers skyline views. The train takes about 24 minutes and leaves and arrives every 12 minutes. Also included is free shuttle bus transport from the Airport Express stations at Kowloon and Hong Kong Island to most major hotels.
Fun Fact
• Hong Kong is located in the Special Administrative District (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China on land that was a colony of the British Empire from 1842 until 1999. When the British first arrived, they felt the city on Hong Kong Island did not have enough land area, so they acquired more land on the peninsula north of the island. The city has since spread onto the Kowloon Peninsula, which now, like Hong Kong Island, is a forest of skyscrapers. Today the Hong Kong SAR covers about 425 square miles, including about 250 islands.