At long last, after a great deal of lobbying and work by organizations such as the British Hospitality Association, Chinese travelers to the Schengen countries of the European Union now no longer need to get a separate visa to also visit the United Kingdom. The scheme begins on 1 July.
This is welcome news for U.K. hoteliers.
Start tweaking your offerings to cater to what will be a steadily growing market, certainly if the number of Chinese travelers I saw on a trip last week to Amsterdam is anything to go by.
The latest numbers on Chinese long-haul travelers from TravelChinaGuide.com show that Chinese guests are largely avoiding London and the United Kingdom. The destination received 379,327 fewer Chinese travelers than France during the first three quarters of 2014—a disparity that should alarm U.K. hoteliers.
The U.K. came in 18th place overall on a list of top 20 outbound destinations for Chinese tourists. (France was 10th.) London is the world’s most popular travel destination, so one might assume that if a separate visa was not needed, it would propel the U.K. to a much higher position on the list.
France, by the way, is the Chinese traveler’s favorite non-Asian destination, according to the list.
Chinese travelers probably are the most eager travelers on the planet at the moment. The Chinese traveling have parents who could not have dreamed of the possibility. As travel for the Chinese is a recent phenomenon, those who make up the Great Chinese Exodus are going to A-List capitals, just as Europeans did when they first started traveling in large numbers when the Grand Tour was devised, to be followed by the emergence of travel agencies.
That it has taken so long for Chinese travelers and their revenue to have been granted an easier time of things to get to the U.K. is either shameful or careless. Or was it a calculated gamble that did not pay off—that the Chinese would without thinking of the time and cost involved stump up the extra funds to get a second visa?
We’ll probably never know, but we can only say “thank you” and get our hotels in order.
It might not be too much of a hurdle to claim that the ugly hand of politics was behind the delay. The United States government’s unexplained decision to not host, as it has long done, the annual United National General Assembly at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria might be a similar example.
The reason behind that decision, apparently, is that because the venerable Manhattan hotel is now owned by Chinese company Anbang Insurance there are worries over security for such a sensitive event. Certainly not because anyone is pandering to an electorate. Who’d suggest such a ludicrous idea!
According to a paper co-written by the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, one of 10 trips across a border during 2014 originated from mainland China, although that number involved only approximately 5% of the country’s population.
If COTRI’s numbers are correct, that percentage will increase to 9% (or another 50 million tourists) by 2020 when it predicts one in seven border crossings will originate in China. That’s almost the entire population of England, and it is only going to grow. Yes, the lion’s share still goes to Hong Kong and Macao (considered foreign destinations), but the trend is moving toward ticking off those major must-sees.
Get ready for them.
Email Terence Baker or find him on Twitter.
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