Griffall said it will take years to set up the relationships needed to succeed in the Chinese market. He estimates six years passed trying to get the Japanese market in a "solid" state for the company. "Not great" is how he describes expectations for the initial Yellowstone tour.

"It's early. It might be in the 20-to-30-people range," he said. "Will they start flocking here immediately? I think it will take a lot of working through things."

Griffall said it will take a year or two to develop the products the Chinese tourists really want and need and that are priced properly.

"But the numbers are enough that I can see some pretty significant growth over the next few years," he said. "There is a pent-up demand in China (to visit the United States) that is astounding. If each person there comes just one time, we'd have plenty of travelers."

Wu believes airfare that is affordable to many Chinese and their "really wanting to come to see this country for a long time" will prompt healthy and steady growth in the number of Chinese visitors in the coming years.

But a less-tangible attraction also might be in play.

"Chinese people have this kind of very ambivalent feeling," Wu said. "They love the United States because it's the country most Chinese people absolutely worship in terms of culture, political system, economics, development and power. But at the same, because the U.S. always leads the way in criticizing China, they have this other feeling towards this country, as well.

"But this ambiguity or ambivalence makes the desire to come visit the United States even stronger. They really want to come to see what the country is really like," he said. "I wouldn't use 'love' and 'hate' — that's too strong of an impression. Even Chinese development of China is modeled after the capitalism of the United States. But when it comes to political systems and moral issues, these two countries have a lot of differences. This complex relationship creates a lot of desire in a lot of Chinese people to come and see with their own eyes what this country is like."

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com