UK targets Chinese tourists

This summer, former British culture secretary Jeremy Hunt launched an 8-million-pound publicity blitz aimed at trebling the number of Chinese visitors to Britain to 500,000.

Huang Lin, in his 40s, who comes from Shanghai, says he is happy with the new proposal. "If the visa becomes easier, my family hope to travel to France, Britain, Germany and Italy next year," he says.

According to Cheng Xiaodan, CEO of London-based China Holiday Group, Chinese travel agencies will benefit from the proposed visa changes.

A delegation of around a dozen retailers and leisure companies, including Arsenal Football Club, Harrods and Selfridges, will send delegations to Shanghai in November as part of the UK's largest tourism mission to attract Chinese visitors.

Organized by VisitBritain, the trip will last three days, and is mainly structured around one-to-one meetings with individual tour operators and networking sessions.

"We will be meeting many top Chinese tour operators and will hopefully convince them to include Westfield as a stop in their tour packages," says Myf Ryan, UK marketing manager for Westfield shopping centers.

Although Westfield has already geared a considerable number of its marketing ideas toward Chinese residents and students in the UK, such as discount passes for VIP card holders and goodie bags for new students, Ryan says it is important to reach out to China's domestic market.

Selfridges sees value in conducting one-to-one meetings with tour operators in China.

"Consumers (in China) still rely heavily on agents and tour operators to book every part of their trip, from flights and accommodation to leisure activities," says a spokesperson for the company, adding that face-to-face meetings work best with Chinese tour operators.

"The face-to-face culture is very important in China, so conducting meetings in person is highly valued. Also, the effort to make the journey to China is appreciated and shows how serious a company is about doing business there."

Like Westfield and Harrods, Selfridges has begun to recruit more Chinese shop assistants and install China UnionPay terminals in recent years.

Despite these efforts, industry observers believe the road ahead remains difficult and some suggest Carrick's views are too optimistic.

"The changes being asked for are particularly significant ones," says Andrew Osborne, a partner at UK law firm Lewis Silkin.

"The UK government wants to be assured that people coming here on tourist visas will eventually leave, but once they are in the UK it is difficult to monitor them. So it is easier to check people before they come to the UK," he says.

The proposal would bring the UK's tourism visa policy closer to that of Schengen countries, which is a situation the British government has been trying to avoid. "The British government wants to maintain control of its own policies. They don't want to rely on other countries to control their borders," Osborne says.