Hong Kong Travel Pass
A lesser-known travel document that is issued to non-residents of Hong Kong, it allows holders to use resident counters and automated gates at Hong Kong immigration.
The Hong Kong Travel Pass has been issued since January 1998 by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government. It is intended for frequent visitors to Hong Kong who are travelling on business and is physically very much like a passport, containing 32 stamp pages and a machine-readable biographic page. The document is issued with a validity of 3 years and allows the holder to stay in Hong Kong for 2 months per entry. Holders can use Hong Kong resident immigration counters and the e-Channels (automated gates) after a short biometric registration procedure is completed upon their first entry with the Travel Pass.
To be eligible for the pass, applicants must: have genuine business reasons to visit the city, hold a passport with visa-free access to Hong Kong and have made 3 or more trouble-free visits in the 12 months preceding their application (not including trips to/from mainland China or Macao). The applicant must also nominate a referee or major business contact in Hong Kong to vouch for them. The applicant must also provide a letter explaining their business reasons for visiting the city. Exceptions can be made to the 3-visit requirement if the applicant can satisfy the Director of Immigration in writing that their future visits may bring substantial benefits to Hong Kong. As with any immigration procedure, the authorities conduct due diligence on each applicant and thus the Director of Immigration reserves the right not to issue a Travel Pass even if the application criteria previously stated has been fulfilled.
The first and last internal pages of the Travel Pass. I couldn’t find a single photo of the internal pages online despite extensive searching so I believe that I am the first to publish how it looks inside.
Beyond the application requirements listed on the Hong Kong Immigration Department website, there is very little information about the Travel Pass online. I couldn’t find a single photo anywhere of the inside of a specimen version of the document or any first-hand accounts of entering Hong Kong with it. So, I decided to apply for one myself and now I have it in hand! Processing time is stated as 6-8 weeks and in the case of my application it only took about 4 weeks.
The document has a height of 125 mm, the same as a ICAO 9303 compliant TD3-size passport booklet, and a width of 100 mm which is a bit wider than a TD3 at 88 mm. This means it won’t fit in most passport cases or holders. It is a machine-readable travel document meaning it has a machine-readable zone (MRZ). The data in the MRZ is in an ICAO 9303 compliant format. While the document has 32 stamp pages, these are not used by Hong Kong immigration as stamping ended in 2013. It seems that the design of the document has simply not been changed since the end of stamping.
MRZ breakdown from ICAO 9303 Part 4: Specifications for Machine Readable Passports (MRPs) and other TD3 Size MRTDs.
So, who is this document for?
Aside from those who want to enjoy expedited entry and exit to and from Hong Kong, I think the Travel Pass could also appeal to those who want to hold a general-purpose identity document issued by a non-western government. By general-purpose I mean for everything except crossing borders. In this way I can see it functioning like the Palau ID card, which is also issued to non-resident non-citizens of the issuing country and doesn’t confer right of residence anywhere. The Palau program has been successful: over 50,000 people have been granted a Palau ID since the program launched in 2022. Each of them payed a fee that varies depending on the card’s validity period, from about 250 USD for a 1-year card to 2400 USD for a 10-year card. The program was of course very well marketed. The Hong Kong Travel Pass could be even more useful as it is bilingual in Chinese and English. The Palau ID card is more durable than the Travel Pass but Hong Kong and China are certainly more widely known around the world than Palau.
Please contact us if you would like to apply for a Travel Pass, we can help!
