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A Commissioner for Tourism is to be appointed whose duty will be to promote the development of the industry, the Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, said today.

In his Policy Address, Mr Tung said the Commissioner would "take our new vision for tourism forward with a clear focus."

He said that while Hong Kong had unique attractions such as its East-meets-West culture, past achievements in tourism were no guarantee of success in the future.

Tourists now demanded more sophisticated attractions, and our competitors in the region were upgrading their tourism infrastructure in a bid to capture a greater market share.

"We must therefore take a strategic review of how best to respond to the present circumstances, and develop initiatives to maintain the interest of visitors from the Mainland, from other Asian countries and from the rest of the world.

"In order to enhance our appeal as a tourist destination, we will promote new attractions which will complement our unique flavour and provide for a wider range of events in Hong Kong," Mr Tung said.

He said the broader vision was to cultivate Hong Kong's image as the Asian centre of arts and culture, and of entertainment and sporting events.

We needed to build on the popularity of regular international events such as the Hong Kong Arts Festival and the Rugby Sevens, as well as capturing the imagination with more cultural and artistic presentations such as the Treasures of China exhibition, which was so successful late last year.

Mr Tung said he realised that this could not be done without proper venues for world-class events. The Government was committed to providing more support in this area, and as a catalyst for upgrading our image as Asia's entertainment capital it was planning for a new, state-of-the-art performance venue on the West Kowloon reclamation.

"We will further develop proposals for other major facilities which will be both unique attractions in themselves as well as venues for cultural, entertainment or sporting events, including a new sports stadium, a new centre for water-sports and a multi-media theme park."

Mr Tung said new facilities and attractive events were key planks in the tourism strategy, but they were not the whole story.

We needed also to look at ways of better presenting to the world our distinctive heritage, much of which was on show in our historical buildings and our archaeological sites, some of which dated back 6,000 years.

He said: "I have asked the Hong Kong Tourist Association to set up a Heritage Tourism Task Force comprising experts in this field.

"The Task Force will focus on individual initiatives and on a broader strategy for promoting our heritage sites and developing opportunities for joint promotions with the Mainland and other regional destinations."

End/Wednesday, October 7, 1998

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