China’s economy is booming, the travel restrictions in the country have lessened, with growing interest in tourism among Chinese. The number of Chinese tourists who travel outside their homeland each year is expected to nearly triple to 100 million people by 2020. No wonder the US is targeting Chinese tourists.
American cities and businesses are positioning themselves to profit. They are establishing offices in China, and lobbying the government to ease restrictions on travel to the U.S.
Noel Irwin Hentschel, CEO of tour operator AmericanTours International who now spends half her time in China is quoted to have said:
There’s more than a billion people here, Twenty percent of them are the ones with the money, with the ability to travel, from what we understand. There’s a lot of pent-up demand.
According to a recent survey by the Shanghai-based Hurun Report, Chinese with personal wealth estimated at more than $1 million rank travel as their top leisure activity.
Which destinations in America do Chinese find appealing?
Las Vegas is definitely one since Gambling is popular among Chinese visitors and of course Chinatown as they like to see how Chinese-Americans live. Chinese restaurants can also hope to do well since tourists like to eat Chinese food.
Amongst the first to wake up this call of encouraging tourists is The Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York. It has wined and dined Chinese tour operators, catering especially to the bus companies that pass through the area on their way between New York City and Niagara Falls. Now, one in five of their 350,000 yearly visitors arrive on these Mandarin-language tours.
The rest must follow suit too as they gear up to receive an armloads of Chinese tourists!
Source: Salt lake tribune
