Hong Kong shopping centres offer free parking for first time in 20 years as 541,000 people leave city on second day of Easter break
- Shopping centres such as Harbour City offer five to 10 hours of free parking for customers, a promotion unseen since Sars outbreak in 2003
- About 541,000 people, including around 365,000 residents, left the city as of 9pm, according to Immigration Department data
Some of Hong Kong’s big shopping centres are offering free car parking for the first time in more than two decades in a bid to lure customers, with hundreds of thousands of people leaving the city for a second straight day over the Easter holiday weekend.
On Saturday, about 541,000 people, including around 365,000 residents, left the city as of 9pm, according to Immigration Department data. About 376,000 people entered over the same period.
Many of Saturday’s outbound travellers at the Lo Wu control point said it took them up to half an hour to cross the border and the process was largely smooth, marking a shift from the huge crowds and long waiting times at checkpoints a day earlier.
Some of Hong Kong’s large shopping centres, including Harbour City in Tsim Sha Tsui and Times Square in Causeway Bay, adopted motorist-friendly policies to drive footfall, with a queue of vehicles waiting outside the former at about lunch time.
Times Square granted patrons two hours of free parking a day, which could be raised to a maximum of seven hours with spending.
Harbour City, Hong Kong’s largest shopping centre with more than 2,000 car park spaces, is offering five hours a day of free parking and up to 10 hours if customers spend at the mall or restaurants, a promotion unseen since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars, in 2003.
The Post found that motorists queuing along Canton Road in Tsim Sha Tsui waited between 15 and 45 minutes for a space at Harbour City. Some drivers appeared to give up, having waited just five minutes.
