Tourism sites still selling guesthouse rooms in "dangerous" deathtrap

Booking sites are offering Hong Kong guesthouses in a building marked "dangerous" by the government: not only are fire repair works ongoing but many fire hazards remain unsolved
Hotel booking sites are still selling rooms in a fire-ravaged Hong Kong building condemned as “dangerous” by the government, a Transit Jam investigation has found.
A notice posted at the entrance to New Lucky House declares the building "dangerous"
One global platform, Booking.com, offers at least four New Lucky House guesthouses - including one rated as “fabulous” - for stays this week, ranging from $300-500 per night.
But the building is still in a chaotic state, with several observers claiming it should be evacuated and shut down following a massive blaze which killed five people just a month ago.
Buildings Department (BD) posted a public notice at the building on 19 April, nine days after the blaze, declaring the building “dangerous” and ordering the building owners to start work on rectifying broken concrete and exposed iron bars by 18 May.
Aside from fire damage and problems of dirt, garbage and rodents, a tour of the building today revealed hundreds of unaddressed fire safety and fire escape issues.
More than half of the building’s fire doors were propped open or broken beyond function. Corridors and staircases still smell strongly of soot, with significant fire damage and soot on the lower six floors, where fire hoses are burned and melted. Emergency lights do not work, electrical cabling hangs down over fire escapes, a scenario one expert called the "widow maker" for its danger to fire crews. Garbage and construction waste block the fire escape stairwells.
Tourists seemed unconcerned for now. One Russian family of four ending their stay at Hang Fung Hostel told Transit Jam they did not know there had been a fire in the building and said the guest house was “fine”.
Another long-term guest house resident, who gave his name as Yeung, said the situation was “so so”. Yeung said he had a lucky escape on the day of the fire, showing photos of himself covered in soot from his escape. “There was so much smoke and the exit was completely black, we couldn’t see anything,” he said.
Yeung had escaped with a neighbour, he says, after some debate as to whether they should use the fire escape or stay in the room. “We didn’t know if the fire would come into our hotel. We are on the fourth floor, it was too high to jump.”
Other residents escaping had earlier reported chaos in the hallways, with no exit signs visible and no fire alarms ringing. One of the five dead was thought to have fallen trying to escape from a higher floor, while others were found either in the corridor on the second floor - just two floors below Yeung's escape route - or the staircase between the seventh and eight floors, according to Fire Services Department (FSD).
According to residents of illegal structures on the roof, the government had sent no Care Teams to support survivors or those still living and staying in the building. But the government had helped out with fresh water supplies while the water was off, one said, and a garbage collection service had resumed several times a week.
The government and politicians are silent on the issues: neither Buildings Department, Fire Services Department, Home Affairs Department (which issues Guesthouse licences), the Yau Tsim Mong District Council, the Yau Tsim Mong Care Team or Hong Kong Tourism Board responded to Transit Jam’s questions.
The tragedy of the fire and subsequent investigations revealed the owners of New Lucky House had ignored official BD fire safety notices on fire doors and associated infrastructure for the last 16 years. That in turn revealed the true nature of Hong Kong fire safety enforcement: some 175,000 fire safety directives issued by the government remain ignored or outstanding as at the end of 2023, representing 45% of the total number of fire safety directions ever issued.
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