Till 2016 Indian citizens had a visa free entry into Hong Kong. However, it was detected by the authorities that Indians were the largest group of persons who tended to overstay their free visa conditions and ended up seeking illegal employment. An interesting news item dating back to over 10 years is that of an Indian hockey team sponsored by a local Hong Kong club for a tournament. They played no hockey but overstayed their visas and applied for asylum thereafter. In 2016 this number of asylum seeker Indians was around 2000. This and many such cases of abuse of the visa free entry led to the introduction of the Pre Arrival Registration (PAR) for Indian citizens in Jan 2017.

The PAR is not a visa and a suitable via media between visa free entry and consular visa processing.This allows the authorites some amount of pre arrival scrutiny and screening of travellers. It is processed on-line, free of charge and near instant approval. The process output is a notification slip which serves the purpose of an entry document into Hong Kong. While this is a very easy and smooth process through a user friendly portal it does not mean automatic approval .While the rejection rates are very small there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that profiling based on age, location of issue or place of birth could be the reason for rejection of the PAR -(Pre Arrival Registration)

The only caution which is also spelt out clearly during the application process is that the data on the Notification slip must exactly match the passport. And this where travelers face issues – and generally this mismatch is not noticed till you arrive at the airport. I first came across this issue on my first visit to Hong kong many years ago – Place of birth on the notification slip was Chennai and the passport stated Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It got flagged at the check in counter and I was allowed to board only after clearance from the Airline Station manager. Maybe I got lucky because the PAR process was then in the early stages of adoption. And I have been extremely careful ever since.

And so, it was till my daughter’s recent trip to Hong Kong with her little boy who had been promised a trip to Disneyland on his birthday – And the mismatch surfaced at check in, and the counter staff denied boarding. While the story had a happy ending and the grandson did board the flight to Disneyland nevertheless it caused a lot of angst till the issue was resolved. The airlines with prompt intervention of the Hong Kong immigration authorities (even at that time of the night!) issued a fresh corrected notification slip. She tells me that there were many others with a similar problem of mismatch such as Mumbai vs Mumbai Maharashtra. The issue is best summed up in this cartoon which i took the help of Chat GPT to generate.

While she was at the airport i tried to generate a fresh slip on the website and got this message “ Pre arrival registration is unsuccesful- you have already made prearrival registration that is still valid “ Since then I have scoured the travel portals and social media to learn more about the issue of mismatch and denial of boarding. This is apparently very common, and the airlines are very strict about it since heavy penalties are imposed for letting an incorrect travel document slip through. The mismatches are mostly in the place of birth and place of issue of passport. Mumbai is not Mumbai, Maharashtra, Chennai is different from Chennai Tamil Nadu, Bengaluru is not Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar is not Bhubaneswar and so on. However, except for one case all of them resolved the issue before boarding though they all lamented that the went through a period of great stress till resolution. Some of them successfully reapplied at the airport, others contacted the immigration authorities whose response as per their reports was extremely prompt. Yet other solutions spoke of amendment of the application. And others referred to support from the Airline in resolution.

While I do not attempt to present the official solution, here are some thoughts and suggestions based on my experience and reading other travelers experiences. Remember the PAR (notification slip) cannot be amended once issued. If you detect the mismatch before your journey the best solution is to apply for a regular Hong Kong visa. Or suggest you reach the airport in time and seek help from immigration and /or the airline and if you still slip through try your luck at Hong Kong airport and hope for a sympathetic hearing. But why go through all this trouble when a little bit of extra caution can save you a lot of hassle at the airport. One of the main reasons cited in some of these posts is that the perfect match was not available on the dropdown menu and so they chose the closest one. The solution in this case is to choose the “Other” option and type out the perfect match. And so, fill up the application very very carefully and enjoy a hassle-free trip to Hong Kong – Wish you best of travels.