Hong Kong Disneyland has offered free entry to more than 40,000 taxi drivers in a bid to promote the theme park, a spokeswoman for the park said Wednesday.
The spokeswoman, Glendy Chu, declined to comment whether the offer was related to the widely reported low numbers of visitors to the park since it opened in September.
Chu said the scheme aimed at having taxi drivers promote Hong Kong Disneyland to their passengers after experiencing it firsthand.
“We discovered that some taxi drivers were not familiar with the park or didn’t even know how to get here,” she said. “We want to encourage them to come experience it and then recommend it to others.”
Taxi drivers were each offered a free ticket worth US$38.05 (?30.10) for weekdays or US$45.1 (?35.67) for weekends with free parking included. Each could be accompanied by up to three guests, who could enter the park on a 50 percent discount, Chu said.
The theme park has not received as many visitors as it anticipated.
Hong Kong’s leadership earlier criticized Disneyland for antagonizing hundreds of tourists from mainland China by turning them away at the park’s gates during the Chinese New Year because the park was full.
Park executives apologized and promised better ticketing arrangements for the Labor Day holidays _ another major traveling season in China _ but visitor numbers this week were lower than expected.
The theme park declined to provide visitor numbers, saying the information was commercially sensitive.
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