A woman leaves a quarantine hotel in Hong Kong's Central's district on Feb 6, 2022. (BERTHA WANG / AFP)
HONG KONG – The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has announced the immediate implementation of a series of measures, including “real-name registration”, to curb scalping of designated quarantine hotel rooms.
In a statement issued on Friday night, a spokesman for the government said designated quarantine hotels should ensure that all room bookings must be made under a real name and full payment must be settled in advance. They should concurrently develop a fair and transparent refund policy.
Travel agents must provide relevant information of the guests to the hotels with full payment settled at the time they reserve the rooms.
Spokesman, HKSAR government
In addition, the hotels should require their partner travel agents not to block book the guest rooms without the booking details of guests.
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“Travel agents must provide relevant information of the guests to the hotels with full payment settled at the time they reserve the rooms,” the spokesman said.
Hotels should require agents to list the breakdown of fees on the customer's receipt to ensure the room rates are the same as the published rates listed on the government's website, according to the spokesman.
The government on Friday also listed Bay Bridge Lifestyle Retreat in Tsuen Wan, Mira Moon Hotel in Wan Chai, and Prince Hotel in Yau Tsim Mong as designated quarantine hotels for inbound travelers.
The three hotels, providing some 900 rooms in total, will start accepting room bookings from Saturday.
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Including the three hotels, there are a total of 65 designated quarantine hotels under the eighth cycle of the Designated Quarantine Hotel Scheme, providing around 24,000 rooms.