China goes West: Utah companies prepare for more Chinese tourists

They'll come in groups, pouring out of buses to "ooh" and "aah" at the colorful vistas in Utah's national parks. They'll spend their tourist bucks here and throughout the West and take back home plentiful memories of good people, good food and good times.

And they will be Chinese.

That's the vision that some Utah tourism-industry executives have, now that China and the United States have an arrangement designed to let Chinese groups travel for fun throughout America. The vision includes someday soon topping the record 320,000 Chinese visitors to the United States in 2006.

"This is a dream destination for the Chinese," said Keith Griffall, chief executive officer of Western Leisure Inc., a Midvale-based group tour company. "They really haven't had that opportunity to come here before, and the numbers could grow dramatically. Three hundred and twenty thousand sounds like lot of people, but it could get into the millions easily, and we are looking to get just a little bit of that pie."

Western Leisure is taking advantage of a memorandum of understanding between the two countries that was signed in December. The agreement provides "approved-destination status" by the Chinese government and permits Chinese group leisure travel to the United States.

Travel restrictions have been loosened in recent years for the Chinese, coinciding with a growing number of middle-class Chinese being able to afford long trips. Chinese individuals and groups with visas can travel to the United States for business and education, but Chinese regulations of its travel agencies restrict group leisure trips to nations that have a bilateral agreement with the Chinese government. The December memorandum with the United States opens the Chinese market for U.S. companies.

Western Leisure is one of about 80 companies in the United States that are officially approved to work with outbound travel operators in China to get Chinese groups to visit the United States in packaged group leisure tours. Western Leisure is working with Julian Tours, based in Washington, D.C., to market services under the name "American Travel Dreams" and has a representative at an office in Beijing.

The number of Chinese visitors to the United States has been on the rise since 2003, when 157,000 Chinese travelers came to America. The 320,000 Chinese visitors in 2006 put China as the 17th-largest international travel market for the United States. The Department of Commerce expects 579,000 Chinese to visit by 2011. The United Nations World Tourism Organization is predicting that overall outbound Chinese travel could reach 100 million by 2020.