High-flying ambitions: Cable car Ngong Ping 360 to diversify offering corporate training and guided tours amid tourism downturn

Eager to capitalise on the island's commercial projects and boost visitor figures, Ngong Ping 360 eyes private tours and other offerings

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Published: 12:00am, 7 Sep 2015Updated: 10:05am, 7 Sep 2015

The operator of the cable car from Tung Chung to Ngong Ping is seeking to diversify its business beyond that of a sightseeing attraction amid a downturn in tourism and opportunities occasioned by development projects on and near Lantau Island.

Ngong Ping 360, which every year transports more than a million people across Lantau, is looking to promote other services including business meeting venue rentals, corporate training and private guided tours.

Two tours - one of Tung Chung and another, by road, to the Ngong Ping highland - are to be introduced during an 18-day period of cable car maintenance that starts today. They will become a regular alternative activity whenever maintenance closes the cable cars for at least a week.

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"We want people to know Ngong Ping 360 is not only about cable car rides," said managing director Stella Kwan Mun-yee.

A subsidiary of the publicly-listed MTR Corporation, the company is also part of Lantau Development Alliance, a coalition of companies and local groups that advocates sustainable economic planning and the creation of job opportunities on the island. Kwan chairs the alliance's tourism committee.

Two weeks ago the alliance submitted a proposal to the government detailing what it would like to see in Lantau's future.

At present Lantau is largely undeveloped but in future it will experience major changes, including reclamation for the expansion of Tung Chung new town; completion of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge; development of an adjacent artificial island to house border checkpoints and possibly hotels, offices and shops; construction of a third runway for the airport; and construction of what would be Hong Kong's largest mall, north of the airport, under the government's blueprint to build a "bridgehead economy".