Foreign and Military Affairs
US travel chief lobbies for Chinese tourists
By Tan Yingzi (Chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-06-18 10:46
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WASHINGTON — Roger Dow, president and CEO of the US Travel Association is well aware that about 215 million Chinese can afford the visit to the US and that they do spend an average of $7,200 per trip to the US — more than tourists from any other country.
"In five to 10 years at most, China will become the No 1 tourist provider to the US with several millions visits," said Dow.
Dow also knows that the current restricted visa policy and limited visas services in China do not help his cause. He is lobbying to the federal government to simplify the visa procedures for Chinese tourists, including using Internet video interviews for tourist visa applicant who don't live in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Shenyang, the only five Chinese cities that offer US visa services.
His organization reportedly spent $356,000 on such lobbying in the first, 42 percent more than the $250,000 it spent lobbying in the fourth quarter of 2009.
"We are encouraging Congress and the State Department to make it happen," said Dow. "There is enthusiasm for increasing the number of Chinese visitors but people are not sure how to do it." From 2000 to 2009, the number of tourists visiting the US from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong jumped by 41 percent to 500,000.
The US Department of Commerce projects this to grow by 22 percent in 2010 to 640,000.
The association predicts that total international inbound travel to the US will increase only about 3 percent in 2010 and that average spending will $4,500 per person per visit.
Those statistics mean it is important to capture as much of the Chinese outbound tourism market as possible, according to Dow.
According to the UN World Travel Organization(UNWTO), China is the fastest growing outbound travel market in the world and will have about 100 million outbound tourists by 2020.
It was only in December 2007 that the US and China signed a memorandum of understanding to facilitate Chinese group leisure travel from China to the US.
Since the US was among to last countries to promote group leisure travel from China, the association believes that the US has some catching up to do.
The association is working with the Congress on developing a test program for videoconferencing visa applications, he said, which will allow applicants who live in China’s remote areas be interviewed by people in Shanghai or New York.
"In China, there are so few US consulates in such a large country, so we believe this will increase opportunities for more Chinese people to come to the United States," he said.
The video conferencing sites will be equipped with identity-check points, secure video lines and applicants data bases. According to US law, American citizens must conduct the interviews.
"There are a certain things we have to work out but we believe it is certainly doable," said Dow. "We think it has a lot of promise and right now we are in dialogue with the State Department. It will not happen immediately but it is a high potential opportunity."
Another promising way to lure more Chinese tourists to the US, he said, is to issue longer-term visas, maybe even five-year visas, for people who travel to the US frequently.
More than one-third of current tourists visa applications from China are for return visits. Dow said that growth in travel industry in 2010, a lot of it fuelled by Chinese visitors, will add 90,000 jobs in the US. The US travel industry currently employs 7.7 million Americans, according to the association.
