The new destinations will connect Hong Kong with popular tourist cities, including Nanjing and Wuxi in Jiangsu province, and Hefei in Anhui province. - ST FILE
HONG KONG: Celeste Lim is excited about her next work trip to Hong Kong. The Singaporean finance worker travels to the Asian financial hub several times a year for business, and often takes the opportunity to visit neighbouring Chinese cities.
With Hong Kong adding 16 new destinations to its cross-border high-speed rail (HSR) service from Jan 26, Lim can now choose to visit more cities in China by train.
“I come to Hong Kong all the time, but it was only in recent years that I started touring around mainland China as well; the HSR makes it quite convenient,” Lim told The Straits Times.
On her last work trip to Hong Kong in October and November 2025, she and her Singaporean friends travelled via the HSR to Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Dongguan in southern Guangdong province.
Destinations on the 16 new routes include some of eastern China’s tourism hot spots and business hubs, such as Nanjing and Wuxi in Jiangsu, and Hefei in Anhui, as well as other cities in Fujian and Guangdong.
The expansion, which will connect passengers from West Kowloon Station directly to 110 Chinese cities, could enhance Hong Kong’s growing role as a “stopover city” for both international and domestic visitors.
A popular sleeper train service to Shanghai, which first started operating in June 2025, will run daily from Jan 26, up from four times a week.
Lim applauded the HSR expansion: “It opens up more new possibilities for me to explore other cities in China on the weekends during or after my quarterly Hong Kong business trips.
“Some of the Chinese cities I visited via Hong Kong in 2025 were places I wouldn’t have thought of going otherwise, but the ease of travelling on the HSR made them more accessible.”
She added that she hoped to visit Shantou, Xiamen or Fuzhou on her next work trip in March.
The HSR’s expansion, announced on Jan 11, comes after railway operator MTR reported record-high patronage of its cross-border high-speed rail service of more than 30 million passenger trips in 2025.
This was 17 per cent higher than the figure recorded the previous year, it said.
It also comes as Hong Kong reported nearly 50 million visitor arrivals in 2025, a 12 per cent jump from a year earlier. Some 26 per cent of them were overseas visitors and the rest from the mainland.
In 2024, foreign visitors accounted for 20 per cent of the total and mainland visitors for 80 per cent.
More tourists from Japan, South-east Asia and the Middle East visited Hong Kong in 2025, according to tourism minister Rosanna Law.
Lim said that on her last visit, her Singaporean friends opted to fly into Hong Kong before heading on to the mainland by train as direct flight times from Singapore to Shenzhen were “atrocious” for tourists.
The flights typically touch down late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, which meant “wasting an entire day’s leave from work and having to pay for an extra night’s stay in the hotel”, she explained.
Flight frequencies and timings to Hong Kong are more varied, and visitors can “cram in some shopping and dining” in the city before leaving for the mainland the following morning, she added.
MTR said travellers from the mainland and overseas accounted for some 55 per cent of its cross-border rail passengers, while the remaining were Hong Kong residents.
It declined to provide further breakdown of the non-local passengers’ demographics, as well as the occupancy and profitability of its cross-border rail services.
The HSR service seeks to “leverage the advantages of the Greater Bay Area’s (GBA) ‘one-hour living circle’”, the rail operator said.
The ridership data “reflects how the HSR has fostered interaction and exchange between people of the two sides (in Hong Kong and mainland China)”, it added.
The GBA is the major economic zone comprising Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in Guangdong province. The “one-hour living circle” refers to the transport options that allow people to commute between cities in the megalopolis within an hour.
Academic Cathy Hsu said the HSR’s additional services “should increase mutual visitation and reciprocal tourism”.
The cross-border rail services are “suitable for long-duration visitors who take the time to explore Hong Kong and some parts of the mainland,” Prof Hsu, chair professor of hospitality and tourism marketing at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, told ST.
“Train travel offers a different experience (compared with plane travel), lower risk in schedule delays, and fixed ticket prices. As travel volume increases between Hong Kong and the mainland, trains offer additional capacity.”
Prof Hsu said, however, that foreigners would probably be the “minority” among the HSR passengers, with Hong Kongers and mainlanders constituting the majority.
“Those who want to visit multiple destinations in one short trip are likely to plan their itinerary in advance with flights booked,” she said.
The HSR’s expansion appears “strategically timed” to coincide with the Chinese New Year travel peak season, during which mainland workers will enjoy a nine-day holiday from Feb 15, according to Hong Kong Tourism Association executive director Timothy Chui.
Business- and first-class seats on the Jan 26 trains to Nanjing and Hefei were sold out within hours on Jan 12, the day that tickets for the new destinations went on sale.
Seats for all three classes on the first trains to Hong Kong from Nanjing and Hefei on Jan 27 were all sold out as well.
“The HSR expansion is a game-changer that can become a fresh tourism model for Hong Kongers travelling to the mainland and mainlanders coming to Hong Kong,” Chui told a radio programme on Jan 13.
Local tour agencies are now adjusting their offerings for mid-range destinations like Nanjing to factor in the new option of travelling via the HSR instead of only by flight, he said.
The new destinations will also facilitate business people travelling between Hong Kong and the manland, he added.
“The HSR is competitive in terms of overall travel time,” Chui said.
“Flying from Hong Kong to Nanjing, for example, takes 2.5 hours. But factoring in the time taken to travel to the airport, check in luggage and then travel to the city centre, the journey can come up to seven or eight hours – roughly the same as the 7.5-hour train ride there.” - The Straits Times/ANN
