SmartPlay fails to live up to name on debut

Ayra Wang

The Leisure and Cultural Services Department apologized for a hiccup that has plagued the first day of operations of its latest venue booking system SmartPlay, which costs HK$500 million to install.

This came after SmartPlay, the new intelligent sports and recreation services booking and information system, logged multiple complaints following its launch at 7 am yesterday.

"It's completely rubbish and much harder to use than the previous system," an online user said on Facebook, adding that it took her more than an hour to get acquainted with the system, only to be unable to pay after she finally managed to make a reservation.

Another comment under a post by LCSD on Facebook was similarly excoriating: "The department made a trashy system, spending four years at a cost of HK$500 million."

The Legislative Council's finance committee approved the HK$500 million for the LCSD to develop a new one-stop digital booking system in 2018 to replace the leisure link computerized booking system that had been in use for more than 20 years.

Acting Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Lillian Cheong Man-lei said the LCSD has been asked to look into the problem.

Users, including patrons of the old system, must register and complete an identity authentication before using the system via the official website or through iAM Smart, a mobile application providing digital government services launched in late 2020.

The department said it enlarged the capacity of the new system to 10,000 concurrent users from 1,000 under the old system, "so as to enable a faster login to the system by more members of the public," LSD said last month.

Users would also be able to check balloting results and their refund status and use different means of e-payments on the platform, it said.

However, some users said they could not even log in to the system.

New People's Party Dominic Lee Tsz-king said he had failed multiple times to log into the system in the morning, as he was stuck in the process of verifying his identity through iAM Smart.

"Many citizens also told me they had trouble logging into the system," he added in a Legco meeting yesterday.

A user, Lam, said he could not log into the system at the beginning, and was stuck on the page "change the booking facilities" after entering the system.

"I tried many times to leave the page and that made my computer crash," said Lam, adding that the system was troublesome.

"I was logged out of the system several times after logging in and had to wait in line to enter the system again and again," a user said on Facebook.

The department said upon media enquiry yesterday that "we apologize for any inconvenience caused."

It added that problems such as error messages and long queues for log-ins occurred due to a surge in demand, as about 200,000 people were trying to log in yesterday morning, compared to thousands on other days.

"The department has followed up on the problems with contractors involved to change the settings and the system gradually improved after 7.45 am, and so far more than 10,000 people successfully made bookings after the system got back to normal," it said.