September 13, 2004
Here is something the United States and Latin America should begin looking at: getting a slice of the 100 million Chinese tourists a year who are expected to flood the world in the not so distant future.
Last week, China added 27 European countries to its list of ''approved destinations'' for Chinese people to travel abroad in package tours. France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and other European countries are now among 54 countries in the world approved to receive Chinese travel groups, but neither the United States nor any major Latin American country is on the list.
It's a big deal, involving billions of dollars, which for some reason has not yet caught the public eye in this part of the world. While individual Chinese citizens can theoretically travel wherever they want, the Chinese government makes such trips cumbersome and expensive. Most Chinese tourists travel abroad in package tours, Chinese government reports show.
China already is one of the world's most rapidly growing sources of outbound tourism: According to the World Tourism Organization, which monitors the industry's trends, more than 20 million Chinese will travel abroad this year. The number will increase to more than 100 million by 2020.
FARTHER AFIELD
Until now, most Chinese tourists have traveled to Macao, South Korea and Australia. But we will soon see millions of Chinese tourists shopping in Europe. France alone expects 1.5 million Chinese tourists next year, according to French press reports.
''China is already a larger source of outbound tourists than Japan,'' said Augusto Huesca, a senior official with the WTO, in a telephone interview from Madrid, Spain. ``By 2020, we expect China to be among the four or five largest sources of outbound tourism in the world.''
The Chinese government, in an effort to prevent a major surge of capital outflow, allows tourists to take only up to $5,000 when they travel abroad.
''The Chinese love shopping,'' a WTO study on China's outbound tourism says. ``They admire famous brands and commodities with local characteristics, such as articles made of crocodile skin in Thailand, gold or silverware in Hong Kong -- [and] garments and handbags of famous brands in Europe.''
Incredibly, despite the current spat between the United States and China over the $125 billion U.S. trade deficit with China, the Bush administration is not raising hell about the U.S. exclusion from the Chinese list of ''approved'' destinations.
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said the United States restricts visas to Chinese citizens, suggesting that there is no major U.S. interest in attracting Chinese tourists.
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