Reputations bruised in lucky draw fiasco

• Featuring prizes more in keeping with those at an office party, the online Tourism Board event was supposed to promote the city, but turned out to be a glitch-ridden embarrassment

Hong Kong's government wants the city to become a hub for innovation and technology. The debacle over the Tourism Board's new year lucky draw raises doubts as to just how prepared and determined it is. Website hitches that led to delays and complaints augur poorly for ambitions and have dented reputations of capability and efficiency. That is aside from the way in which the promotion was rolled out and the attractiveness of the prizes offered.

The idea for the HK$4 million draw was conceived at short notice after the annual New Year's fireworks display was cancelled for security reasons. It was coupled with an enhanced version of the nightly Symphony of Lights laser show, featuring small-scale rooftop pyrotechnic presentations. It is up to the beholder to decide whether the alternatives had the same wow factor. Perhaps the best gauge of success is that although millions of people were expected to take part in the draw, just 1.63 million registered.

Lucky draw fiasco: tourism board gets system up and running

Prizes associated more with office parties than an organisation that promotes Hong Kong to the world were on offer to locals and tourists alike, round-trip air tickets, supermarket vouchers and iPhones among them. But it cannot be said for sure whether the rewards were appealing enough as problems accessing the website made registering a challenge, with participants uncertain whether they were in the running to win. The board has admitted that its hastily constructed website was blacklisted by providers and search engines and it was unprepared for the sudden rush of traffic. It is now investigating the myriad complaints.

But the board is a government-subvented body and reputations are at stake. Authorities make much of Hong Kong being an international financial centre, a technologically advanced place in which to do business and invest in. Seven months of social unrest have disrupted daily life, causing transport delays and, as a result of vandalism, damage to infrastructure. To then have online services not functioning smoothly, as happened with the lucky draw, is nothing short of embarrassing. Getting to the bottom of the problem, being transparent and ensuring such a chaotic situation is never repeated, is the least we should expect.

Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.