Europe

Our offices in Continental Europe focused their efforts on media pitching, leading to many media familiarisation tours to Hong Kong and subsequent coverage. Our Paris office, for example, organised a special press trip, in which Olivier Lebé, author of the book Repulse Bay, took the French media to locations featured in his book, which won the Prix du Premier Roman in 2013. The PR effort was sustained by book-signing and media events back in Paris.

In addition, we saw the first-ever travel mission to France, which attracted 23 tour operators from the market and generated one to three new contracts per buyer. We also continued to raise our profile and network with the European travel trade at the ITB in Berlin.

In the UK, our colleagues were busy devising plans for co-ops with production houses. They also ran a Facebook campaign called “A Perfect Day” with magazines Escapism and Foodism, in which consumers were invited to create a one-day itinerary with “My Hong Kong Guide” to win a trip to Hong Kong. And the Hong Kong Sales Mission, the biggest trade event ever organised by the HKTB in the UK and an annual event held for the 25th year, was put in place to encourage contract discussions between Hong Kong hotels and UK buyers from both the leisure and MICE sectors.