2015年CRI Britain Tries to Attract More Chinese Tourists

 

China is the currently the fastest growing source of tourism revenue for the entire world, but Britain is missing out due to its complex visa rules. 

Chinese tourists are expected to spend the equivalent of more than one and a half billion U.S. dollars in Britain this year, much of it in London. 

Gordon Innes is the Chief Executive Officer with London& Partners. 

"We're seeing Chinese tourist numbers growing very rapidly every year to the UK. Last year almost 400,000 Chinese coming into the UK came through London." 

That sounds like good news for London, except that about three times as many Chinese tourists visit the French capital Paris. 

France and most other European countries are in the Schengen zone, which means if you get a visa for one country, you automatically have a visa for the rest. 

But Britain remains¹ outside the Schengen passport free zone and plans to stay there. 

The British government thinks it may have found a solution.

"The exciting thing is we now can parallel process a Schengen visa and a U.K. visa at the same time." 

Christopher Rodrigues is the chairman of VisitBritain. 

According to the agency, the number of Chinese visitors to Britain in the first six months of 2015 reached a record 90,000, a 28 percent rise on the same period of 2014.

And tourism officials are expecting the total number of Chinese visitors for the year to reach more than 200,000.

Rodrigues says the current procedure for applying both a Schengen visa and a U.K. visa is still costly² and time consuming, and to meet expectations, the British government needs to do something more.

"Our leading finance minister has initiated³ a scheme to bring 50,000 additional visitors from China not having to pay for a visa, so it's a free visa scheme."

Britain is also re-branding several famous tourist destinations in Mandarin⁴, with Savile Row being translated in English as "Tall, Rich, Handsome Street" and London's tallest building the Shard⁵ becoming "Star Plucking Tower". 

The initiatives appear to be working, because Chinese tourist numbers are growing in the U.K. though the industry believes the true potential remains untapped. 

London is currently the world's most popular tourist destination, though Chinese visitors account for less than three percent of total tourism spending.

For CRI, I am Guo Yan.

1 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

2 costly   

adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的

参考例句：

• It must be very costly to keep up a house like this.维修这么一幢房子一定很昂贵。
• This dictionary is very useful,only it is a bit costly.这本词典很有用，左不过贵了些。

3 initiated   

n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入

参考例句：

• He has not yet been thoroughly initiated into the mysteries of computers. 他对计算机的奥秘尚未入门。
• The artist initiated the girl into the art world in France. 这个艺术家介绍这个女孩加入巴黎艺术界。

4 Mandarin   

n.中国官话，国语，满清官吏；adj.华丽辞藻的

参考例句：

• Just over one billion people speak Mandarin as their native tongue.大约有十亿以上的人口以华语为母语。
• Mandarin will be the new official language of the European Union.普通话会变成欧盟新的官方语言。

5 shard   

n.（陶瓷器、瓦等的）破片，碎片

参考例句：

• Eyewitnesses spoke of rocks and shards of glass flying in the air.目击者称空中石块和玻璃碎片四溅。
• That's the same stuff we found in the shard.那与我们发现的碎片在材质上一样。