Dragon Boat Festival sees 6.67 million cross-border journeys as Hong Kong checkpoints hit post-pandemic record

Hong Kong’s land, sea and air checkpoints were working at full throttle over the three-day Dragon Boat Festival long weekend. According to figures released on 22 June by China’s National Immigration Administration, a total of 6.667 million inbound and outbound passenger movements were processed nationwide between 8 and 10 June, up 12.9 percent year-on-year. Nearly 300,000 of those journeys were made by Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residents, reflecting the territory’s rapid return to pre-Covid mobility levels. The Lo Wu and Lok Ma Chau Spur Line control points handled the lion’s share of the surge. Throughout the weekend, Hong Kong Immigration Department officers opened every kiosk and e-Channel, while the MTR Corporation ran additional trains on the East Rail Line. Average queuing times remained under 15 minutes, helped by the wider roll-out of contact-free QR code gates for frequent travellers.



Meanwhile, travellers keen to ensure their paperwork is flawless before hitting the border can turn to VisaHQ’s online portal (https://www.visahq.com/hong-kong/). The service guides users through the latest visa and travel-authorisation rules for Hong Kong, mainland China and more than 200 other destinations, offering step-by-step assistance and courier options that help passengers breeze through e-Channels when crowds are heaviest.

The department said it also pushed real-time crowd-density data to mobile apps so travellers could divert to less-busy checkpoints such as Heung Yuen Wai. For corporates, the numbers are an important barometer: Shenzhen-Hong Kong day trips by engineers and sales teams are approaching 90 percent of 2019 volume, according to the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce. Logistics operators likewise reported stronger demand for same-day cross-border trucking of high-value components, while travel-management companies said premium-class rail tickets on the Guangzhou–Shenzhen–Hong Kong Express Rail Link were sold out for most peak departures. Officials view the traffic as vindication of infrastructure spending on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and the just-opened Passenger Departure Hall at Terminal 2 of Hong Kong International Airport. Both projects were designed for seamless “collaborative inspection and joint clearance” so travellers clear both jurisdictions in one stop. Security experts noted that the festival traffic also served as a live stress-test of the city’s new AI-assisted risk-profiling system, which flagged only 0.02 percent of travellers for secondary inspection—less than half last year’s rate. Looking ahead, authorities expect the next major stress point to be the summer school holidays starting mid-July. The Immigration Department has asked employers to encourage staggered leave and remote work to smooth peaks, and warns that the popular Lo Wu crossing will undergo overnight maintenance in early August. Frequent travellers are advised to enrol in the free fingerprint-free e-Channel scheme before the rush.