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Greater China

Aug 11, 2005

HK Disneyland promotes itself ahead of opening

HONG KONG - Although Hong Kong Disneyland is more than one month from its grand opening, the publicity and promotion of the theme park already has been sped up.

More than 200 Chinese and foreign journalists from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), mainland China and Taiwan attended Tuesday's tour of the newly-built five-star Hong Kong Disney Hotel and the four-star Hollywood Hotel.

Disney's target tourist markets are clear - it intends one third of park visitors to come from Hong Kong, another third from the Chinese mainland and the remainder from Southeast Asian countries.

Tuesday's tour was one of a package of promotion activities held recently by Hong Kong Disneyland. The only railway specially built to provide access to a Disney park worldwide - a part of Hong Kong MTR railway - started operation August 1. A tour by journalists on July 21 and some other overseas promotion activities earlier have drawn much attention from Hong Kong citizens and even people abroad.

The results are also apparent. Roy Yan Hardy, vice president for marketing and sales for the theme park, said during a question and answer session on Tuesday for the visiting journalists that Hong Kong Disneyland has seen strong advance reservations of theme park tickets and hotel rooms. He said hotel room reservations during holidays, such as the Mid-Autumn Festival and weekends in the coming months, has already accounted for half of the total of 1,000 rooms in the two hotels.

Peter J H Lowe, general manager in charge of HK Disneyland hotel operations, said in an interview with Xinhua that most of people who have reserved Disneyland hotel rooms are Hong Kong residents. The two hotels have received some wholesale reservation of hotel rooms by mainland Chinese residents, as well as Singaporeans and some other southeast Asian countries. He believed that a wholesale hotel room reservations would pick up further soon.

To attract more attention to Hong Kong Disneyland, Hong Kong Disneyland has decided to arrange a three-day running opening celebration activities starting from September 12 with special daily themes. In fact, the "Disneyland fever" has already begun to appear in Hong Kong.

Since August 1, when the MTR railway to Disneyland opened, the railway attracted a daily average of about 10,000 passengers in the first eight days of its operation. Nearly 40,000 people took the railway line merely to experience the fascinatingly designed trains and take pictures at a fountain just outside the front door of the theme park and watch the fireworks shows. The trains have the shapes of Mickey Mouse's ears and statues of the Disneyland figures. The Hong Kong Disneyland project was announced in 1999 as a venture between the Walt Disney Company and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government.

Following the completion of the first construction phase for Hong Kong Disneyland by the HKSAR government, construction of the theme park and resort started in January 2003, and the park is scheduled to open on September 12. Hong Kong Disneyland is expected to receive at least 5.6 million tourists during the first year of operations.

(Asia Pulse/XIC)

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