When you arrive in Hong Kong as a tourist, either at Hong Kong International Airport or the one of the passenger ferry terminals, you are required to present a completed arrival card to the immigration officer for immigration clearance. The arrival card is usually distributed by the cabin crew during the flight. You can also find the arrival cards stacked on arrival card desks in the immigration hall, situated on level 5 of the Hong Kong International Airport.
Hong Kong residents do not need to fill out the arrival card. Instead, they will present HK residence card to the immigration officer at the immigration checkpoint or use the immigration autogate for unmanned immigration clearance.
Information to Fill in Hong Kong Arrival Card
Hong Kong arrival card is written in two languages, English and Cantonese. English text is written first followed by the equivalent Cantonese text. The arrival card is written both sides. The front side contains a form related to arrival in Hong Kong that must be filled out by a visitor. The back side contains important notice to Hong Kong visitors regarding their condition of stay in Hong Kong.
Related: Things to do when you are on a layover at Hong Kong airport
The front side of empty Hong Kong arrival card without any data filled out in the form is shown in the following image.
Filling out the form should be straightforward. But first, let’s label the input fields in the form to make it easier to reference in the rest of this article.
Brief explanation on each labeled input field and its corresponding data source is summarized in the table below.
| No | Field Name | Description | Data Source |
| 1 | Family Name | Last name as written on passport | Passport |
| 2 | Given Names | First and middle name as written on passport. Given names can also be written according what’s written in the machine-readable zone (MRZ) of the passport, which sometimes omits middle name. | Passport |
| 3 | Sex | (Binary) gender, M for Male and F for Female | Passport |
| 4 | Travel document No. | Passport number | Passport |
| 5 | Place and date of issue | Passport issued date and issuing country | Passport |
| 6 | Nationality | Nationality of passport holder | Passport |
| 7 | Date of birth (day) | The day of birth as written on passport | Passport |
| 8 | Date of birth (month) | The month of birth as written on passport | Passport |
| 9 | Date of birth (year) | The year of birth as written on passport | Passport |
| 10 | Place of birth | Place of birth as written on passport | Passport |
| 11 | Address in Hong Kong | Address of accommodation or place of stay in Hong Kong | Hotel reservation |
| 12 | Home address | Address in origin country or country of embarkation | Residence / citizen card |
| 13 | Flight No. / Ship’s name | Flight number or ship’s name for the Hong Kong arrival | Boarding pass |
| 14 | From | Country of embarkation | Boarding pass |
| 15 | Signature of traveller | Personal signature | Registered / documented signature |
As can be seen in the table above, several data sources are used to fill out the form in the Hong Kong arrival card. Frequent flyers should not have any problem in locating such information. If you’re traveling for the first time, or if it is the first time for you to fill out Hong Kong arrival card, worry not. We will show you how to complete the form.
How to Complete the Form in Hong Kong Arrival Card
When filling out the form in Hong Kong arrival card, we need to look up necessary data from several sources. Main data sources include passport and boarding pass. We will choose some passport specimens and map the information on each specimen to the corresponding fields in the form. There is also some data from the boarding pass that should be copied into the form. We will locate such information on the boarding pass and put it into the respective fields in the Hong Kong arrival card form.
Let’s start with information lookup from passport.
Passport sample #1: United States passport (next generation)
Passport sample #2: Philippine passport
Using the above passport specimens as references, we can therefore map the information on the passport specimen #1 and specimen #2 to the corresponding form fields in Hong Kong arrival card as follows.
| No | Arrival Card Field Name | Data to Fill Based on Sample #1 | Data to Fill Based on Sample #2 |
| 1 | Family Name | TRAVELER | DELA CRUZ |
| 2 | Given Names | HAPPY | MARIA |
| 3 | Sex | M or MALE | F or FEMALE |
| 4 | Travel document No. | E00009349 | P0000000A |
| 5 | Place and date of issue | USA / 10 JUL 2020 | PHL (Philippines) / 27 JUN 2016 |
| 6 | Nationality | USA | PHL (Philippines) or Filipino |
| 7 | Date of birth (day) | 5 | 16 |
| 8 | Date of birth (month) | FEB | MAR |
| 9 | Date of birth (year) | 1965 | 1980 |
| 10 | Place of birth | WASHINGTON D.C., USA | MANILA |
To better visualize how data from the passport is mapped and copied into the form, labels are added to each passport specimen. The number in the labeled passport specimen corresponds to the same number in the labeled Hong Kong arrival card form.
Labeled passport specimen #1 (US passport):
Labeled passport specimen #2 (Philippine passport):
Note that passport has machine readable zone (MRZ) located in the lower section of the passport data / identity page. In the passport specimen, the MRZ section is the area inside the orange box. The MRZ section consists of two rows whereas each row contains some portion of the information from the identity page. The information contained in the MRZ can be used to validate the information in individual data fields located in the upper section of the identity page as can be seen in the labeled passport specimens.
Another thing to note, in the Philippine passport specimen, middle name is not used in the MRZ section. This means that putting middle name in the arrival card is also optional. In other passport, however, middle name can be included in the MRZ section. Consequently, it is more desirable to write the given names field as [First Name] [Middle Name].
Moving into boarding pass, flight number / ship’s name and country of embarkation is needed in the Hong Kong arrival card. Let’s use a sample Cathay Pacific boarding pass as shown in the image below.
As can be seen the image, the flight bound to Hong Kong was CX411, which departed from Incheon, South Korea. Note that if you use transit flight, you need to fill the origin from the last leg of your flight that is bound to Hong Kong and not from the original place of departure. Let’s say that you fly from London to Hong Kong with layover in Dubai. Instead of London, you shall put the “From” field with Dubai and provide the flight number for Dubai – Hong Kong route.
Based on the sample boarding pass, we fill the information on the arrival card as follows.
| No | Arrival Card Field Name | Data to Fill based on Sample |
| 13 | Flight No. / Ship’s name | CX411 |
| 14 | From | Incheon |
Having copied the info from the boarding pass, we are almost done with filling the information on the arrival card. Home address and the address during the stay in Hong Kong should be easy to fill. Here is the catch. What address should be put if you only stay in Hong Kong for less than a day? This case is common if you have layover long enough but is still less than a day that instead of staying at the airport, you prefer going to the city just for sightseeing without sleeping at a hotel or other accommodation place. For that case, you can put the address as NONE. If the immigration officer asks, you can explain that you’re in a layover and will be visiting Hong Kong just during the layover time.
Once the whole form is completed, we can walk to the immigration gate and present the passport, boarding pass, and the arrival card to obtain the immigration clearance.
Hong Kong Landing Slip
After obtaining the immigration clearance, the immigration officer will give you a landing slip. This small piece of paper contains relevant info related to your stay in Hong Kong: your name, passport, and duration of stay. You need to keep the landing slip since the immigration officer may ask you to present it again when you walk through the immigration gate to depart from Hong Kong. A sample of landing slip is shown below for your reference.
As a side note, when you visit Hong Kong, make sure that your passport validity is at least six months from the date you depart from Hong Kong. If your passport validity is less than six months on your date of departure, the airline staff may reject you to onboard the aircraft during the check-in process.
Have a splendid experience in Hong Kong. Happy travel!