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Keith McCord reportingUtah's tourism industry is huge, as most people are probably aware, and it's about to expand even more. Thanks to a new agreement between the United States and China, tourist companies here will soon be able to market group vacation packages in China.
The potential number of travelers is staggering. Right now, Chinese travelers to the U.S. are either students or business people. Up until now, leisure travel was more difficult to achieve because of strict Chinese regulations. That's about to change, and that means millions of people will be coming to America to take vacations, and many of them will come to Utah.
The Utah Office of Tourism has a new batch of travel brochures printed in Chinese. A video of Gov. Jon Huntsman speaking Mandarin Chinese plays at tourism trade shows inviting Chinese citizens to come and visit, and soon they will be.
"The critical part is the ability for us to be able to promote in China and to be able to actually sell the product there. We couldn't before," explained Keith Griffall, CEO of Western Leisure Inc.
A new agreement between the U.S. and China now allows tourist companies, like Utah's Western Leisure Inc. to work directly with their counterparts all over China to put together group leisure tours.
Griffall says in 2006, nearly 360,000 Chinese citizens visited the states. They were primarily students and business travelers. In a few years, the number could grow astronomically.
"By 2020, it's projected that 100 million Chinese could travel overseas. Now, not all of them would come here, obviously, but getting a small piece of that pie would be worth our time and effort," Griffall said.
Through the years, the Utah Office of Tourism has discovered that attractions from the Salt Flats to Bryce Canyon, and even the national parks in other parts of the region, are an easy sell to foreign tourists.
"Certainly the Europeans, when they first started to come to John Wayne's country, were astonished by the landscape and the fact that they could spend some time in the solitude; and I think the Chinese are going to have that excitement as well," said Leigh von der Esch, managing director of the Utah Office of Tourism.
Ten percent of the tourists who visit Utah are from foreign countries, and financially, that's a big deal. The China effect will only add to it. "The average visitor can spend $90 per day, and the international visitor can spend $300 and up per day. So, the bang-for-buck, it's there for us to be out there internationally marketing," von der Esch said.
Utah's Western Leisure Inc. is one of about 80 U.S. tourist companies that have the OK to organize these tours with China. It's hoped that the tours will be up and running by the end of the year.
The next big international tourist markets that Utah sees in the future: Korea and India.
For more information on Western Leisure Inc. or to get to the Utah Office of Tourism's Chinese Web site, click the related links.
E-mail: kmccord@ksl.com
