West Kowloon station to add 16 mainland high-speed rail stops ahead of Lunar New Year

Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation has confirmed that, from 26 January 2026, its West Kowloon high-speed rail terminus will serve 16 additional mainland Chinese cities, boosting the direct network to 110 destinations. New stops such as Nanjing, Hefei and Wuxi are long-time production and e-commerce hubs for Hong Kong–based manufacturers. Rail planners say the expansion was finalised with Beijing’s railway authorities specifically to capture surging cross-boundary demand during the week-long Lunar New Year holiday.(visahq.com)

Tour operators are already swapping short-haul flight itineraries for rail packages. Industry estimates show that a door-to-door journey from Central to downtown Nanjing will take roughly seven hours by train—comparable to flying once airport check-in and security waiting times are added. Corporate mobility teams expect travellers to favour rail on routes of up to eight hours, cutting per-diem costs by up to 30 per cent and shrinking the carbon footprint of frequent mainland trips.(visahq.com)

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Immigration and Customs anticipate record traffic. They plan to keep e-Channel lanes open round-the-clock and deploy roving officers at West Kowloon to maintain queue times below 15 minutes. HR managers should remind employees that Hong Kong still issues paper landing slips on board, which must be retained for exit checks.(visahq.com)

Analysts see the move as a cornerstone of the Greater Bay Area’s “one-hour living circle”, further eroding Hong Kong’s reliance on short-haul flights and cementing its role as a multi-modal hub for Delta supply chains. In the medium term, they expect airlines to redeploy capacity to longer, more profitable sectors, while hotel operators pivot marketing toward rail passengers arriving from inland cities.(visahq.com)