Travel Daily | China Tourism Australian Roadshow

CHINA Tourism staged its biggest ever Australian roadshow last night with a workshop and dinner at Sydney’s Four Seasons Hotel.

Thirty-two tourism leaders from twelve provincial regions flew in to promote the country’s diverse attractions. They highlighted China’s beauty, its nature, culture and its forty-five world heritage sites as reasons to visit the country.

Speaking at the event, the coalition’s Shadow Tourism Minister, Bob Baldwin noted that 220,000 Australians visited China in the first six months of this year, while over 700,000 Chinese tourists came to our shores.

“I would like to invite China to match Australia; because if we had one percent of the Chinese population visiting Australia that would be 13 million people. On current figures, 13 million Chinese tourists would have spent $70 billion – that ‘s nearly five percent of Australia’s gross domestic product,” said Baldwin.

“The friendship between us is growing stronger each day because we are sharing our countries, and our cultures, with each other through travel,” Baldwin added.

The MP said he wants to see more Chinese tourists visit Australia, and if the Libs win the election next month, he’ll be working to introduce more welcoming visa arrangements.

Number one will be electronic lodgement of visas, secondly he’d like to see multiple entry visas to encourage greater repeat visitation to Australia, and thirdly, he’ll look at improving the current processing time service standards, and trialling a premium processing time visa, a 24-hour turnaround visa application for an additional fee.