With the burgeoning Sars epidemic spreading fear among travellers worldwide, the Hong Kong tourist board must be ruing the day it commissioned a series of magazine ads telling readers a visit to the city will "take your breath away".

Shortness of breath is one of the main symptoms of Sars - severe acute respiratory syndrome - a deadly new strain of pneumonia that started in southern China and quickly moved to Hong Kong before spreading around the world.

More than 100 people have already died from Sars and there are at least 3,000 reported cases worldwide - though most of the fatalities and cases are in China and Hong Kong.

A spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Tourism Board told the Wall Street Journal Europe that the ad campaign, which has been running in British editions of magazines including Cosmopolitan and Conde Nast Traveller, as well as on billboards in Hong Kong, was commissioned before the Sars outbreak.

She added that when the first cases of Sars made the news in Hong Kong in mid-March, the tourist board tried to pull the ads or get the headline changed from "Hong Kong will take your breath away" to "There's no place like Hong Kong".

But this was too late for some monthly magazine headlines, so the "take your breath away" ad is now running in several UK titles.