Tour firms hope U.S. opens door to Chinese

The ads hanging on Spring International’s storefront window here, across the street from People’s Square, speak to Chinese consumers’ increasing wealth and penchant for seeing the world.

There is the Mummy’s Return package: seven days in Egypt by plane and boat to Cairo, Alexandria and Luxor for $1,250. The Romantic Getaway promises eight cities in France and Italy over 10 days for $1,575. And there are Diamond trips to South Africa and Golden excursions to Russia.

Notably missing are promotions for travel to the United States, even though tour operators in China say American cities such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco and New York would be tops on the wish lists of many Chinese.

Promoting tours to the U.S. is banned in China because the country isn’t among Beijing’s approved travel destinations, which is largely due to Washington’s restrictive entry process -- a complaint hardly confined to the Chinese. A survey released this week by an American business lobbying group found that foreigners overwhelmingly viewed the U.S. as the worst when it came to obtaining a visa and entering the country.

“America is not an open country,” said Chen Bo, an overseas travel specialist for Spring International, one of China’s largest privately run tour services. Referring to finding a tour group package to the U.S., he said, “You cannot get it anywhere.”

But as pressure grows on Washington to ease up on visa rules tightened after the 2001 terrorist attacks, American and Chinese tour companies see signs of hope that many more of the millions of wanderlust-driven Chinese will head for the United States.

Their hopes are pinned partly on the increasing dialogue between U.S. and Chinese officials on trade and tourism. U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, traveling with a business delegation, met this month with Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice Premier Wu Yi. According to people present at the talks, Yi spoke vigorously about the need for Washington to increase visas for Chinese travelers.

“She said bringing more Chinese tourists to the U.S. could help the trade deficit,” said Noel Irwin Hentschel, chief executive of AmericanTours International, a Los Angeles-based packager of U.S. tours, recounting the meeting at Zhongnanhai, China’s White House.

It will take a lot more than tourists to make a dent in America’s trade shortfall with China, which by U.S. measure surpassed $200 billion last year and is on pace to break that record this year. Still, some 300,000 Chinese tourists visited the U.S. last year and spent about $1.5 billion, Gutierrez said.

More than twice that number of Chinese made trips to France, which, like other countries in the European Union, is an approved destination country. Overall, about 32 million Chinese ventured overseas last year, and an estimated 100 million a year are projected to do so by 2020.

Despite their tendency to skimp on lodging and eating -- many prefer to have Chinese food for all their meals -- studies show Chinese spending close to $1,000 per overseas visitor, more than the Japanese.

Hentschel figures she will be lucky to sign up 1,000 Chinese tourists this year, out of more than 800,000 travelers she expects to bring from abroad. But Hentschel recently hired five Mandarin-speaking staff members in Los Angeles and is opening an office and renting an apartment in Beijing, both at the upscale Oriental Plaza next to Tiananmen Square, so she can make frequent visits to build relations with tour operators.

“I am making a commitment to China,” she said. Her goal: to book 175,000 tourists from China over the next four years.

That is contingent on the U.S. being granted approved destination status by Beijing, which will almost certainly depend on Washington first taking steps to facilitate travel to the U.S. from China.

Gutierrez, in an interview in Shanghai, declined to say when he thought approval might be won, although some in the tourism industry believe that it may be three years away. Gutierrez said that the volume of Chinese tourists to the U.S. was up 12% this year through the end of August.

“We are now above the level before 9/11; we’ve worked our way back,” he said.

The current numbers, though, mask the difficulty that travelers from China and other nations face entering the United States. Most Chinese prefer to sign up with tour groups because of language and costs. With that route currently closed, many are touring the U.S. on business, student, family-visit or individual tourist visas, but these are often hard to get.

In the recent survey funded by industry lobbying group Discover America Partnership, 40% of 2,011 overseas travelers said they had tried to get a U.S. visa but gave up. Many Chinese believe that they are subjected to especially tough security and financial scrutiny by U.S. officials.

“People have to report their economic situation, their job situation, their property in China, their marriage situation, their relatives in the U.S. and many other things,” said Fang Hui, vice general manager at China Women’s Travel Service, a state-owned agency that has organized overseas trips for more than 100,000 people. For trips to many other countries, she said, “ordinary Chinese tourists can easily apply for a visa through travel agencies and go to the country with tour groups.”

Han Yuting has always wanted to visit America. “But I have never tried to apply for a tourist visa because I worried it would be rejected,” she said. Han can certainly afford it; the 26-year-old makes about $1,300 a month as a senior public relations manager for an international property company in Shanghai.

For the Chinese New Year’s holiday in February, she plans to fly to South Korea, which has been heavily promoting its food and popular culture to the Chinese. South Korea is one of more than 115 countries approved by Beijing for tour group travel.

“If I could go to America,” Han added, “I would take a long holiday and spend a month there. I want to visit Hawaii first, and then I want to go see Los Angeles. I heard that they have the largest Chinese community in North America.”

Early this year, about 500 Hyundai car dealers in China went on a weeklong trip to Australia as a reward for their performance.

“We got visas for 100% of the people and everybody was happy,” said Chen Wenjie, head of outbound travel for China Travel Service, the nation’s largest tour services company. “The visas took less than 10 days.”

Hyundai is planning a similar seven-day excursion in January for 500 dealers, but this time it wants to take them to Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. The dealers are scheduled to have one day of meetings and the rest will be sightseeing and shopping.

China Travel Service is packaging the group trip as an “incentive tour.” Chen said Tuesday that he had not yet heard from the U.S. Embassy on the visas, but he didn’t anticipate major problems. The trip would be the largest Chinese tour group to the United States.

“U.S. officials recently have been more relaxed about granting visas,” Chen said. “If big companies can get visas very quickly this way, maybe we’ll promote the U.S. as an incentive destination.”

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don.lee@latimes.com

Cao Jun in The Times’ Shanghai Bureau contributed to this report.