A major development in intercity travel in China, the introduction of high-speed sleeper trains connecting Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong is being viewed as a key driver to change the dynamics of the region's tourism industry.

Hong Kong recently inaugurated a high speed rail sleeper train service connecting the Hong Kong West Kowloon Station with Beijing and Shanghai.

According to a press statement by the Hong Kong public transport firm MTR Corporation, the sleeper trains depart Hong Kong West Kowloon Station in the evening and arrive in Beijing at 06:53 and Shanghai at 06:45, making the journeys around 12.5 hours and 11 hours respectively.

Return trips depart from Beijing and Shanghai at around 20:00 and arrive in Hong Kong at 08:47 and 07:29. These routes run four days a week, departing all three stations every evening from Friday to Monday.

“It will be more comfortable and faster, reducing the travel time by about half, and will cover a wider range of destinations, including popular tourist attraction cities,” John Lee, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, said in a press statement, referring to the previous overnight train routes that connected Hong Kong with China’s two biggest cities.

The statement says that the intercity railway services, Beijing-Kowloon and Shanghai-Kowloon, was launched in 1997. The train ride to China’s capital took around 24 hours while the journey to Shanghai was about 19 hours.

It says that the services were suspended during the pandemic in 2020 and have been replaced by the new high-speed options that launched on June 15.

But while the new trips do indeed slash the overnight travel time by almost half, the high-speed sleeper services take slightly longer than the daytime bullet trains already in service connecting Hong Kong and the two cities in mainland China.

Currently, the train company operates one daily high-speed connection to Beijing, which takes around 8.5 hours, and one to Shanghai, which is around 7.5 hours.

The statement says that there are three types of seats to choose from, second class (without a bed), sleeper and deluxe sleeper.

A standard sleeper class cabin consists of two bunk beds, sleeping four passengers, in a cabin. The deluxe version, only available on the Hong Kong-Shanghai route for now, features a bunk bed, wardrobe and sofa.

The statement adds that prices range from HKD 937 to HKD 1,506 (USD 120-193) for the Hong Kong-Beijing route and HKD 682 to HKD 2,128 (USD 88-273) for the Hong Kong-Shanghai route.