Hong Thai Travel ran 56 years on borrowed time — liquidated at minus HK$73.7M

Hong Thai Travel (康泰旅行社) was founded in Hong Kong in 1966 by Wong Si-sun (黃士心) and passed to his son Wong Chun-tat (黃進達), growing to more than 20 branches at its peak. By the end the 56-year-old agency was fully owned by Beijing's Caissa Hui Huan Network Technology, a subsidiary of Shenzhen-listed Caissa Tosun.

The pandemic shut the border and the business with it. Tour leaders were put on unpaid leave for more than two years — one, Martin, worked as a security guard to get by and kept hoping for the "0+3" border reopening. Staff still employed worked only four to eight days a month, and the company told them it wanted to "preserve strength" until borders fully reopened.

On October 27, 2022 Caissa Tosun's board resolved to start automatic liquidation proceedings for Hong Thai because it was insolvent: net assets were minus HK$73.7 million (RMB 68.13 million) as of June 30, 2022. The parent was drowning too — two years of cumulative losses of RMB 1.388 billion (about HK$1.5 billion) had earned it the "ST" special-treatment tag and delisting risk on the Shenzhen exchange.

The human tail was left unpaid. A union said about 100 employees were still working on reduced hours, the MPFA recorded unpaid MPF contributions for 3 employees and late-payment surcharges for roughly 250, and on the day of the announcement staff were told to collect their belongings with no severance communicated. The reopening Hong Thai had waited two years for had arrived a month earlier — and the parent liquidated the brand anyway.