A transport expert on Thursday said competition between the taxi industry and other ride-hailing services will heat up, after cabbies called off a five-day strike to give authorities more time to carry out enforcement action.

The Hong Kong Tele-call Taxi Association had earlier threatened five days of industrial action from March 5, saying their business was seriously hurt by their unlicensed rivals.

The association's chairman, Wong Yu-ting, apologised after a meeting with transport officials for causing "unease" to the public.

Professor Timothy Hau from the University of Hong Kong's Business School told RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme that the taxi drivers' “extreme" and "counterproductive” measures had angered the public.

"[These measures] just make people madder and upset with them and dissatisfied with their services, which I must say is really getting increasingly worse."

Hau noted that there are more players entering the ride-hailing market.

"With Gaode entering the picture, and Tada more recently, we have a situation in which the government announced that within a year, they're going to regulate ride-hailing services...and so during this period, a lot of companies will come in and get their foot in the door,” he said.

“They would want to ensure that they have a place once all the regulatory policies are issued…It’s going to be a fairly crowded market,” Hau added.

The taxi industry has said the government would submit a legislative proposal within this year to regulate ride hailing platforms.

They also expressed the hope that authorities would require ride-hailing service providers to attend professional training beforehand, and have their vehicles undergo inspections annually.