Art Basel and the Hong Kong Tourism Board have inked a three-year global partnership to promote the Chinese city’s arts and culture at the firm’s fairs, starting with its Paris edition in October.

Noah Horowitz, Art Basel’s CEO, announced the initiative today at a press conference at its flagship Swiss fair. Details of the project are still being finalized, but it will involve events or presentations at fairs promoting Hong Kong, where Art Basel has had a fair since 2013.

The Swiss fair giant first partnered with the Hong Kong Tourism Board in 2020 for Hong Kong Spotlight by Art Basel, a “mini-mini” version of the usual fair that was the only in-person Art Basel event that year, amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

More collaborations have followed. At Art Basel Hong Kong in March, the tourism board presented a pop-up cha chaan teng—a local diner—that served the city’s favorites food and beverages, from Hong Kong-style milk tea to pineapple buns, alongside artworks by homegrown talents.

The new partnership can be seen as part of the board’s efforts to lure back long-haul visitors to the former British colony. The number of annual international visitors to the city is still well below what it was before the 2019 protests and the pandemic, when officials adopted strict travel restrictions.

Attendance at this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong was also down this year, with 75,000 visitors compared to 86,000 in 2023, the first edition after the city lifted its Covid quarantine. (The all-time high remains 88,000 visitors, set in 2019.)

Hong Kong has not been enjoying good press in recent years. Foreign governments and human-rights groups have said that a national security law adopted in 2020 has eroded freedoms in the city, and the U.S. economist Stephen Roach, formerly the chair of Morgan Stanley Asia, has repeatedly said that Hong Kong is losing its reputation as a business city.

The United States, Canada, and Australia have issued travel advisories for Hong Kong, warning of possible wrongful detention and the arbitrary enforcement of local laws.

On Monday, Jonathan Sumption, who resigned last week as an overseas judge on Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal, wrote in an op-ed that the rule of law in the city, which has maintained a common law system inherited from the British, “is in grave danger.”

Hong Kong authorities have hit back at criticisms from the West, and some local business leaders have argued that the city remains Asia’s key financial hub, despite reports of capital outflows to Singapore.