After Japan snub, there's always Korea

The good news - Japan and South Korea, two travel destinations most popular with Hongkongers, are on course to reopening their borders to international travelers.

But the bad news is that Japan initially will only open to tripled-vaccinated nationals from four nations, not including Hong Kong.

And it does not recognize the Sinovac vaccine with which many residents in the SAR have been inoculated.

It would have been nice if Hong Kong had been among the first group of places to be welcomed back.

Then, many who have been vaccinated with BioNTech could have still visited even though Sinovac is excluded for the time being.

Yet people - including Travel Industry Council chairwoman Gianna Hsu and Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau Tang-wah - need not view Hong Kong's being left out for now as a big loss since it is meant to be a trial and will be extremely small in scale.

If the trial is successful, travelers from more countries and places can be expected to be added.

Will Hong Kong be included next? That's a matter for Yau to fight for during what is probably the remainder of his current term.

Perhaps more pressing is for him and Hsu to approach Tokyo to better understand why Sinovac is not acceptable to Japan for international travel purposes even though the vaccine has been approved by the World Health Organization in the fight against Covid.

Once their concerns are understood, officials will be able to address them.

Could the Japanese be scared by surreal TV images of draconian lockdowns in mainland cities, including Shanghai and Beijing?

Japan's policy to exclude travelers vaccinated with Sinovac or Sinopharm for now should by no means be representative of any global practice.

For example, the United Kingdom recognizes both Sinovac and Sinopharm in addition to the Western-developed jabs from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

It is clear that the world has reached the opening-up stage, with countries scrambling for tourists in a post-pandemic order.

Austria has gone the furthest, dropping all Covid entry restrictions to such an extent that international visitors can now enter the country without needing to show proof of vaccination, recovery or a negative test.

For the time being, though, Yau could best devote the next month and a half to reaching an understanding with South Korea that it will not follow Japan's example and that it will welcome travelers vaccinated with Sinovac when it starts issuing short-term travel visas and e-visas again next month.

Don't let the bursting of the Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble - which was not Yau's fault - overshadow the efforts.

According to Japan, international visitors will have to be tripled vaccinated with the first two doses being any of the recognized jabs, while the booster must be an mRNA dose.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong should start planning to reopen its international borders fully to get other nationals coming and spending here.

It must not fall too far behind others, bearing in mind that tourism has been one of the city's major economic pillars.