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UK to ease visa procedures for Chinese visitors

Originally published on www.businesstraveller.asia 25/11/2011 - Filed under: News »

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The British government is taking significant steps to ease visa processes for Chinese tourists in order to tap into the Mainland’s lucrative outbound market.

The move comes in light of recent research revealing that Britain is in fact falling behind its European counterparts as a leisure and business hot spot (see story here) due to a combination of reasons.

According to the study titled How The Rise of Chinese Tourism Will Change The Face of the European Travel Industry by Hilton Hotels and Resorts and School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) the total number of Chinese outbound tourists reached 57.39 million in 2010, overtaking Japan as the largest outbound tourist market in Asia, of which 3 million travelled to Europe. Despite the halo effect of the Royal Wedding earlier this year and the forthcoming 2012 Olympics, the UK only received 150,000 of those Chinese visitors in 2011 where as France, Italy and Germany received between 500,000 and 700,000 visitors in 2010.

One of the main logistical hindrances is the UK’s slightly cumbersome visa procedure for Chinese tourists, which is set to be streamlined and enhanced in time for the 2012 Olympics, said Patricia Yates, director of strategy and communications at Britain’s national tourism agency, VisitBritain. “There is an ongoing discussion about how we can keep our borders safe but make Britain as welcome as we can for next year,” said Yates.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport released a new Tourism Policy in March this year that pinpoints the main issues with visa procedures and proposes ways of eliminating them, such as rolling out guidance notes in foreign languages for application forms and putting applications online for Chinese visitors. At present, it is only possible to book an appointment with a UK Border Agency office in China online rather than fill out the form itself.

Another issue is the fact that the UK is not part of the Schengen catchment area, meaning visitors have to apply for an additional visa. “We have to persuade visitors from China that it is worth applying for the extra visa and that’s not even in money terms but in terms of time and process,” said Yates. To lower that hurdle, the 12 UK Border Agency offices across key Chinese cities try to process applications as soon as possible. “We don’t do ourselves any favours in the way we report our processing time because we say that 90 percent of applications are done within 15 days” when actually visas can be turned around within three to five days, claims Yates.

The study cited above also outlines that Chinese travellers have high service expectations. To address this, the Tourism Policy strives to “improve tourists’ first experience of the UK when they land at our ports and airports by cutting passport control queues with more e-Passport gates,” alongside improving the hotel star rating system to ensure high standards.

For more information, visit www.visitbritain.org

Alisha Haridasani

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COMMENTS » 

Resortvn - 30/11/2011 02:26

UK to ease visa procedures for Chinese visitors

With regard to this article, I just feel weird when knowing the new policy UK visa clearance. The British government is taking significant steps to ease visa processes for Chinese tourists in order to tap into the Mainland’s lucrative outbound market while they while they refuse visa for us who work in hotel industry to come to UK for biz purpose to attend WTM to promote inbound market and outbound as well.

We do understand UK government applies strictly visa clearance and we respect that however, please do the right judgement as every single wrong decision or judgement you made, it effects us (money, timing, our prestige) who want to come to UK purely for business purpose.

In conclusion, people who may face such a difficult visa clearance to your country either for leisure or business then they will give up as there are many other countries rather than UK for travelling and doing business.

I hope my little note not lost among a millions of feedback.

Thanks

alamyfly - 01/12/2011 23:50

It's all but impossible for Chinese to get Visas into Europe unless in an organised tour group. Quite naturally, organisers of such tours concentrate on mainland Europe due to the applicability of Schengen. Several countries can be combined into a European tour for one visa application. Britain is an expensive and unecessary hassle as an increment to a wider. Britain's first problem, thereby, is it's non Schengen status.

The second problem is common to both Britain and mainland Europe, the regular exclusion of "go it alone travellers". These would tend to be much higher net worth individuals than tour participants. That would also, at one remove, apply to the students (but not wanting to study in UK), gap year and post graduation year young people, with no visible income, but heavily funded by very high net worth parents.

Put simply, there is room for attitudinal rethink if Britain really does want to pursue high-value Chinese tourism, particularly to consider that these high net worth individuals are doing very well in China. They have no intention of jumping ship, be it legally or illegally to an ailing Western economy. Why would they? The rethink is fundamental there - how the world has changed in its balance between East and West.

As to the article, well it seems to be words, little sign of action, except that good old chestnut of presentation. I'm afraid it won't do to say it's a presentational issue, around the three or fifteen days. If it is a presentational issue it's in the context that in China there's a general view that it's impossible to get tourism visas to European countries, so why bother trying? The exception, as said, is tour groups.

Until the underlying issue of unavailability is changed, and that information percolates onto the street in China, there will be no change in the number of UK visitors from PRC.

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