The Deputy Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Cheuk Wing-hing, together with the Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, Mr Algernon Yau; and the Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism, Miss Rosanna Law, met the media after attending the Ante Chamber exchange session at the Legislative Council this morning (January 8). Following are the remarks:
Reporter: What are the concerns about the Tourism Blueprint inside in today's meeting? And you have mentioned that you may impose some KPIs for cruise terminal operator. Will it deter other potential bidders, or kind of mount pressure for the current operator, and make the future tender difficult? Because if you are raising the bar and the market does not improve, it may be quite a high pressure.
Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism: First of all, I thanked the Legislative Council and all the members that attended today. They expressed support and gave a lot of very valuable opinions and suggestions about the tourism blueprint 2.0 (Development Blueprint for Hong Kong's Tourism Industry 2.0). Specifically regarding the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal, I always expect the operator to do better. There is no best situation; there is only better operation. So this is my constant expectation. And in the new tendering exercise, of course we will be reviewing the criteria imposed so far. After all the cruise terminal has been in operation for more than 10 years, and the same operator has been operating the terminal, I know that society and of course myself and my colleagues in the CSTB (Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau) have different views on the operation of the cruise terminal and how it might be improved. This morning, members of the Legislative Council also gave us very valuable suggestions on how things it might be improved. So all these will be taken into account in the new tendering exercise.
Reporter: What other challenges were posed, or what else was talked about regarding the Tourism Blueprint? In terms of sports, what is the next step in terms of sports development?
Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism: For the tourism blueprint, I think this morning I heard suggestions or views regarding the Kai Tak Sports Park, the operation and how to utilise it to become a world-class location for mega events, the improvement of the operation of the cruise terminal, how to utilise our beautiful shoreline and island resources in a forwarding tourism, also the promotion of Hong Kong's tourism development, and also how to develop more hot spots for tourism all around Hong Kong. Regarding sports, I think a lot of concerns of course relate to how we can better utilise Hong Kong's position as the mega-event capital and also how we can present an attractive National Games in November of this year. Thank you.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the remarks.)
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