Hongkongers looking to take advantage of eased travel curbs to return to the city have found themselves scrambling to secure hotel rooms for quarantine, with some premises fully booked until August, the Post has found.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on Monday revealed that existing control measures – which are some of the world’s most stringent – would be lifted early next month. Officials and medical experts had cited projection models in concluding that the city’s latest and worst Covid-19 outbreak might have peaked.

From April 1, inbound flights from nine countries – Australia, Canada, France, India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Britain and the United States – will resume after being suspended on January 5.

Fully vaccinated residents will only need to quarantine for seven days, down from two weeks, if they test negative for the coronavirus through PCR screening on the fifth day of their stay, as well as on a rapid antigen test on both the sixth and seventh days.

Hong Kong residents still have to test negative within 48 hours and have a valid reservation at a designated quarantine hotel before they can board flights to the city.

The government added another 18 quarantine hotels with some 6,000 rooms following Monday’s announcement, bringing the total to 43 with about 12,000 rooms after May, the Food and Health Bureau said in a reply to a query from the Post.

But a check on the 43 hotels by the Post found only four of them still had rooms available in April, while seven others only had bookings in May.

Up to 12 hotels did not have any vacancies until June, and eight were not available until July. Returning residents might not be able to get a room at six hotels until August, and six others have not provided any information regarding their booking status.

The shortage has left many Hongkongers stranded overseas scrambling to secure a booking.

Kevin Kwok, 36, who went to Britain for a business trip in January, spent 10 hours calling hotels one by one or seeking help on social media to try to get a room so he could fly back to visit his father, who is in hospital.

Kwok, who works in the information technology sector, eventually managed to get a seven-day isolation package priced at HK$25,000 at a hotel in Hung Hom.

“The government has never had a timetable or plan for making policies, they should put themselves in our shoes to understand the situation better,” he added.

The Nina Hotel Tsuen Wan West is one of the designated quarantine hotels.

Hongkonger Claudia Leung was not as lucky.

The 21-year-old, who has been studying in the US, was trying to change her reservation dates from March 31 to April 2 to take advantage of the shorter quarantine, but to no avail.

She said the hotel did not confirm if she could change the 14-day booking to seven days or get a refund as reservations were full.

Entrepreneur Nat Chu, a frequent traveller who underwent more than six rounds of quarantine over the past two years, opted for a detour from Britain to Thailand to fly back to Hong Kong next month as she was worried that government policies would be changed again.

“The strict quarantine measures for inbound travellers and the government’s frequent changes have made me frustrated,” Chu said.

Hong Kong’s flagship carrier Cathay Pacific, meanwhile, updated its flight schedule to include routes from Britain, the US, Canada, Australia and the Philippines starting from April, but with only two flights for most of the routes that month.

“In order to avoid any unplanned disruptions to our customers that would affect their quarantine hotel and other travel arrangements, we are only able to schedule one flight per route every 14 days,” its statement on Tuesday read.

According to Cathay’s online booking system, most one-way tickets from the nine countries back to Hong Kong were still available online on Tuesday, with tickets for the first flight from London, scheduled for March 31, sold out before the ban was lifted.

Several local travel agencies also told the Post that they had received more inquiries following Monday’s announcement, but that there were not as many bookings for tickets back to Hong Kong as most airlines had not released flight details yet.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Airport Authority on Tuesday said transit services would resume from April 1, coinciding with the lifting of the flight ban.

The authority had stopped transit services since January 16, with only passengers from mainland China and Taiwan allowed to transfer through Hong Kong’s airport.