Montana gov. to travel to China on promotion tour
Posted by admin in General on 06 4th, 2011
HELENA, Mont.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Friday that he will use an upcoming two-week trip to China to promote Montana wheat, beef, tourism and energy — and will continue to run state affairs by remaining in “24/7″ contact with staffers.
The governor is scheduled to leave Friday. He’s set to be the keynote speaker at a conference in Beijing on coal technologies, such as producing liquid fuel from coal. The Gasification Coal Chemicals in Asia Pacific 2011 Conference is being held next Wednesday and Thursday.
“I have been asked to speak at the international coal gasification conference in China and I was able to sort of organize this trip around the opportunity to speak there,” Schweitzer said.
There’s potential for more Montana coal to be shipped to energy-hungry China in the coming years, Schweitzer said. China has large supplies of coal but has also been importing the fuel.
A delegation that includes officials from other states will travel to Shanghai and Hong Kong, as well as the Guangxi and Hunan regions. Schweitzer said he will meet with a chain of American restaurants in China in hopes of convincing them to sell Montana branded beef. He’ll also be meeting with Chinese officials while in the country.
The governor said his wife, Nancy, will be joining him on the trip.
Schweitzer said his trip is being paid for by the Council of State Governments, a nonpartisan trade group over which he is serving as president for a year.
“The state of Montana is not paying a dime for us to go,” the governor said.
Despite a 14-hour time difference, Schweitzer said he will be able to run state affairs by staying in touch with staff over phone and the Internet. He’s scheduled to return June 18.
read comments (0)Countries Aim To Return From Disaster, Disruption
Posted by admin in General on 06 1st, 2011 
Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
Cherry blossoms bloom amid tsunami devastation in Kamaishi city, Iwate prefecture, Japan, on April 20.
Image is everything — at least when it comes to tourism.
A country might boast the best beaches or amazing antiquities, but if potential visitors have reason to worry about their safety, they won’t come. That’s the problem now confronting several countries that generally rely heavily on tourism.
“You may have the greatest attractions, but any bad news will put them on the back burner,” says Jafar Jafari, a tourism expert affiliated with universities in Spain, Portugal and Wisconsin.
Political upheaval in North Africa and the Middle East has cratered the travel business in places like Egypt and Jordan. Far fewer people, meanwhile, are visiting Japan following the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in March.
“People tend to know one thing about an area and, right now, the one thing about Japan is not good,” says Jeff Aasgaard, a travel agent based in Detroit who specializes in Japanese tours. “I am working on trying to get the one thing about Japan back to cherry blossoms and samurai.”
Mexico Still Has Allure
How safe is it to travel to Mexico these days? That may depend on whom you ask.
Drug-related violence has bedeviled parts of the country for the past several years, leading to more than 3,000 deaths in Ciudad Juarez alone in 2010. In April, the State Department updated its travel warning for Mexico, noting that homicides and carjacking continue to be serious concerns in the northern border states.
But State also notes that “millions of U.S. citizens safely visit Mexico each year.” Ricardo Alday, a spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., points out that Mexico is a large country and travel to destinations such as Cancun and Oaxaca poses no special risk.
“Most of our territory is safe,” Alday says. “There are some areas around the border area that are in a difficult situation today, but that is not reflective of the country as a whole.”
The Mexican government is openly seeking to appeal to adventure travelers — those who strive not just to see the sites but also to engage in some form of outdoor or cultural activity. “Mexico has to become the champion of adventure travel,” President Felipe Calderon said at a conference in December.
That niche market is filled with people who have continued to visit much of Mexico. The stories they bring back home will do more to dispel the image that all of Mexico is some modern version of the Wild West than any public relations campaign could, says Shannon Stowell, president of the Adventure Travel Trade Association.
“My personal opinion is that Mexico could not spend enough money to overcome that negative image with positive PR,” Stowell says.
— Alan Greenblatt
Reshaping travelers’ mental images of Japan and other affected countries is going to take considerable amounts of time. Government officials and tour operators in all of these countries are using several methods in attempts to convince would-be travelers that they shouldn’t be afraid.
What they’re trying to do is entice the most adventurous travelers to visit, in hopes they can reassure more nervous friends that these places are, for the most part, perfectly safe.
‘I’m Here And Enjoying Myself’
There are certain places any sensible traveler will want to avoid. Now is not a good time to go sailing off the coast of Somalia, where pirates have made kidnapping a regular occurrence, for example. The State Department also has issued travel warnings for countries that are currently experiencing unrest, such as Yemen.
But strife does die down. And the larger part of most countries hit by natural disasters recovers quickly or was never directly affected to begin with.
On Sunday, Sho Dozono, the president of Azumano Travel, a travel agency in Oregon, led a group of about 85 Americans to Japan. Most will be doing volunteer work in Sendai and other cities that need some cleanup help. But some will just be seeing the sites, because tourism is important for rebuilding the local economy, too.
“Initially, there were some concerns about radiation,” Dozono says, “and that’s why tourism to Japan ground to a halt.”
Dozono’s group is being wined and dined, personally welcomed by U.S. Ambassador John Roos and plenty of Japanese tourism officials. They all recognize the importance of showing that Japan is a safe place for foreign guests.
“Our message for Japan is to say that it’s safe and tourism is alive and well,” Dozono says. “It has to be real live stories of average Americans saying, ‘I’m here and enjoying myself,’ rather than some government official.”
Flights Of Friendship
Dozono has become something of an old hand in leading such goodwill tours. He has taken large groups to New York after the Sept. 11 attacks, to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, and to Thailand after the 2004 tsunami.
Enlarge Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
A street vendor prepares his wares at the Pyramids in Giza, Egypt, on May 28.
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
A street vendor prepares his wares at the Pyramids in Giza, Egypt, on May 28.
The strategy of bringing over the hardiest travelers to help signal that all’s clear is one being pursued in all of the countries that have suffered from a recent streak of bad news.
It’s crucial for destinations to start attracting live bodies as soon as they can. Advertising is important, but “much more powerful is the unsung story — people who have gone over there and told their friends they didn’t feel scared,” says Shannon Stowell, president of the Adventure Travel Trade Association.
Travelers looking for adventure or ways to help out can be “pioneers” that help lead people back into Egypt, says Basem Salah, a tour operator in Cairo.
These include not just adventure travelers but travel agents, who are being lured to places like Cairo and Tokyo with free travel packages.
“Some countries will offer package tours that are reduced in price,” says Jafari, the tourism professor. “This may not attract all the tourists they’re looking for, but may bring in people on a budget who always wanted to come.”
Salah says the major tourist sites in Cairo and the monuments from Aswan to Luxor are perfectly safe. But he recognizes that potential guests will need some convincing. As incentive, he and some others in the local travel industry are offering “revolutionary tours” of recently important sites like Tahrir Square.
“Now it is a re-brand that you will also see the Egyptians who made the revolution,” Salah says. “It’s not going to be monuments only, but the revolution and freedom. We will have people who participated in revolution coming to visit you.”
Offering Some Help
Salah and a number of other Egyptian tour operators are partnering with nongovernmental organizations to put together packages aimed at bringing over volunteers. In addition to sightseeing, they might spend part of their visit working with children at a cancer rehab center, or teaching deaf women to build a business by turning rice stalks into craft paper.
Travel Warnings
The State Department issues travel warnings when ongoing conditions leave a country unstable or potentially dangerous for visiting Americans. The State Department has issued several advisories over the past two months. In the cases of Mexico and Nigeria, the warnings apply to particular regions within those countries:
Yemen: May 25
Syria: April 25
Uzbekistan: April 25
Mexico: April 22
Burkina Faso: April 19
Nigeria: April 15
Ivory Coast: April 14
Iraq: April 12
Lebanon: April 4
Source: State Department
Some of these initiatives are receiving assistance from the U.S. government, which is bringing a group of Egyptian tour operators to America this month to learn best practices in volunteer tourism.
“It’s a key way that we can help Egyptians in this transition period,” says Michael Hankey, cultural affairs program director at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. “It helps the tourism industry because when you have these nontraditional packages, you get repeat business because people have this personal engagement.”
The hope is not just to convince people willing to come over at a difficult time to come back, but to get them to convince their friends that Egypt is a safe place to visit now. Word of mouth is the best weapon the travel business has to convince people that things aren’t as dangerous as they may look on the news.
Like a certain streak of politician, travel industry officials are fond of blaming the media for showing relentlessly negative images.
“I hate to blame the media,” says Dozono, the tour operator in Portland, “but they go from one disaster to another, and they don’t show the recovery. They only show the damage, and people think it’s not safe to go there.”
Recovery Has Happened Before
People in the travel business are doing what they can to counter images of destruction or unrest, collecting video clips, blog posts and Facebook pages that show that life is more normal than prospective travelers might think. Their hope is that the personal accounts of the first willing travelers will go a long way toward dispelling negative images that have driven local tourist economies into the tank.
It has happened before. Places that are enticing enough will always bounce back. Kenya’s tourism industry has recovered from a dip following post-election violence in 2008. Egypt itself staged a successful comeback after its tourism industry was rocked in the early 1990s by a series of terrorist attacks against foreign visitors.
But building business back up through word of mouth from the first few adventurous or well-meaning visitors inevitably takes time.
“I haven’t heard of any situation where the turnaround is quick in a case like this,” says Jafari, the Wisconsin tourism professor. “It takes a long time.”
The new face of tourism
Posted by admin in General on 05 29th, 2011
Kylie Ang, Amy Wang and Chua Nee Chen on a tour bus to the Blue Mountains … Chinese visitors aged 15 to 29 spend twice as much as British tourists of the same age. Photo: Fiona Morris
THE new face of Australian tourism is from Beijing not Birmingham and prefers designer handbags to well-worn rucksacks.
As the numbers of sunburnt British backpackers arriving on shoestring budgets begins to wane, cashed-up Chinese tourists with long shopping lists are emerging as the most important players for inbound tourism.
In the three months to March, 188,600 visitors came here from Britain, a fall of 11.7 per cent compared with the same period last year. Visitors from China rose by 23.2 per cent, by far the largest increase, with 179,500 arriving during the same three months.
The influx was partly driven by Chinese New Year. Last year the value of the Chinese market exceeded $3 billion for the first time, according to Tourism Australia. On average, Chinese visitors spend $6803. Visitors aged 15 to 29 stay an average of 112 nights and spend twice as long and twice as much as British tourists of the same age.
The traditional attractions – beaches, wildlife and open spaces – are a drawcard for Chinese travellers but so is shopping, which explains the popularity of Melbourne and Sydney.
Chinese tourists are drawn to upmarket shops such as J. Farren-Price in Sydney, which sells diamonds, Rolex watches and Kailis pearls.
”In the last two years there has been a significant increase in Chinese tourists, who have an appetite for fine, globally recognised brands,” the director, Julian Farren-Price, said. ”We are very good value for them because they have high taxes on their luxury goods.”
Vivienne Zhang, 27, agrees it is cheaper for Chinese people to buy high-end products in Australia. ”Shopping is a very important activity on their travel agenda,” said Ms Zhang, who came to Australia from Fujian in China on a student visa seven years ago and now has permanent residency. ”A $200 designer bag bought here could cost twice as much in China,” she said.
The Mulberry handbag shop in central Sydney is another favourite destination.
”We get many Chinese tourists, usually buying a bag for themselves before they return home,” said a sales assistant, Georgia Milone. ”Most popular at the moment is our Alexa Chung, which is $1810.”
Less than 10 per cent of the Chinese population can be considered wealthy but with a population of more than 1.3 billion, that still left 130 million people with enough cash to travel and shop, said Sam Huang, a senior lecturer in tourism management at the University of South Australia.
”They want to return home from overseas trips with luxury goods as a symbol of their wealth,” he said.
Mr Huang estimates that by 2020 the number of Chinese visitors could exceed those from Britain and New Zealand.
The executive president of Tourism Australia, Andrew McEvoy, said the boom in Chinese tourism had been carefully cultivated.
”Everyone says this increase in tourism is just happening now, but we have been investing since the mid-to-late ’90s, and in 1999 Australia was the first Western country to be granted approved destination status by the Chinese government. We’ve been building on our relationship with China since then.”
Last July the government said it would spend $30 million over three years to attract Chinese visitors.
Next week the Tourism Minister, Martin Ferguson, will launch the 2020 China Strategic Plan at the China-Australia Tourism Summit in Cairns.
Rapidly changing San Francisco and the travel industry are still a match
Posted by admin in General on 05 26th, 2011San Francisco may no longer live up to its claim as The City that knows how, but it’s a city that still knows how to party.
Just ask the 5,000-plus visitors from around the globe who descended on our shores this week for the travel industry’s biggest international gathering. They leave today definitely wearier and slightly poorer, while The City is flush with the expectation that it will reap some $350 million in tourism revenue in the coming years for its show of hospitality as host of the frenetic event known as Pow Wow.
For the past five days, travel writers, tour operators and exhibitors have been drinking in the sights, sounds and flavors of San Francisco, from the scenic waterfront to the gritty Mission to the outskirts of Lands End. This is a relatively easy sell for a city that long ago traded off its eternal beauty for the enhancement of its treasury, but these financially delicate days, it’s taking no chances. The event was booked solid for five days, the biggest such association activity since before the travel world was shaken to the core after 9/11.
Revelers braved the wind-swept night chill at Pier 39 to enjoy a familiar spot in transformation, before ducking in to a big-top adventure at the California Academy of Sciences, which was extravagant in a way that only a $1 million party could be — a soiree that mixed a salsa band, an Arabesque-inspired acoustic show, and more retro ’80s music than exists on the radio dial. There was enough food and drink to make it a self-sustaining event, at least until the show moves on down to Los Angeles next year, a rare back-to-back industry migration in the U.S. Travel Association’s 50-state tourism show.
“It’s always difficult to let the international trade and media members experience all that California holds,” said Caroline Beteta, president and CEO of the California Travel and Tourism Commission. “So having access to the market place two years in a row is an incredible opportunity.”
It also points to one of the many new trends in today’s travel circles, whereby niche marketing for cities and destinations is replacing the older umbrella groups that used to handle statewide branding. It’s no longer enough to just be on the map of the Napa Valley or the Florida coast — towns like Calistoga and Palm Beach are making sure that people know that theirs is a place worth visiting.
“Whether it’s eco-travel or culinary stops, all these different interests are driving the tourism industry,” said Carli Smith, director of communications for the Palm Beach County Convention and Visitors Bureau. “The way the media and travelers get information today is much different and it gives smaller destinations like us a chance to shine.”
When San Francisco last hosted Pow Wow, it was 1992, the travel industry’s annual showcase was considerably smaller, and The City was vastly different — physically, socially and technologically. Yet a glimpse at the activities of the Pow Wow attendees during the past five days would show that the very same could be said of the travel industry itself.
Today’s top travel agents have names like Expedia and Priceline. You can book an entire trip on a phone that’s smarter than your computer. A tsunami in the Pacific or a rare volcanic eruption can impact the movement of travelers across the globe. And the economic fortunes of a country like Ireland can ground jets and trigger unemployment half way around the world.
Still, some things about travel never change. People still rarely go to spots considered too touristy right in their backyards. I ran into the publicist for “Beach Blanket Babylon” over the weekend who said you’d be surprised how many residents of San Francisco had never seen the iconic show.
“So it’s kind of like Alcatraz,” I said to Charlie Zukow.
“It must be because I’ve never been to Alcatraz,” he said.
Luckily, a National Park Service ranger named Alexandra Picavet was nearby, who offered to remedy the situation. As it turns out, Picavet has never been to a performance of “Beach Blanket Babylon” since it opened in 1974.
As veteran tour operators like to say, problem solved. Traveling can be easier than you think.
Ken Garcia appears Thursdays and Sundays in The San Francisco Examiner. Email him at kgarcia@sfexaminer.com.
China opens outbound travel to foreign operators
Posted by admin in General on 05 24th, 2011BEIJING, May 24 (Xinhuanet) — China opened its tourism market wider and gave licenses to three joint travel services to organize Chinese tour groups overseas.
The National Tourism Administration of China on Monday gave the licenses to TUI China Travel Co Ltd, CITS American Express Travel Services Ltd, and JTB New Century International Tours Co Ltd.
The three joint ventures involve foreign tour operators from Europe, the United States and Japan respectively.
The three are among 14 joint ventures that filed applications for licenses after the administration and the Ministry of Commerce announced the opening of the outbound market to foreign tour operators last September.
“We expect (the opening) will add more options for tourists and improve the tourism industry’s management,” the administration said in a news release.
Previously, foreign tour operators were allowed to operate inbound and domestic travel, but were barred from outbound business.
But insiders said the outbound business is the most lucrative part of the Chinese tourism market, because it is experiencing the fastest growth and generating the most profits in China compared to domestic and inbound travels.
According to a report released by the China Tourism Academy in April, mainland tourists made more than 57 million trips to foreign countries as well as Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and spent $48 billion last year.
It is estimated mainland tourists will make 65 million outbound trips and spend $55 billion overseas this year.
Marcel Schneider, CEO of TUI China Travel Co Ltd, said last week on the sidelines of a news conference in Beijing that after it is granted the license, the company’s outbound business is expected to outgrow its inbound sector in a short period of time. Last year the company brought 50,000 foreign tourists to China.
But he stressed its outbound travel products will not directly compete with domestic counterparts. Instead, it will offer products that are complementary to the existing products offered by domestic operators.
He believed joint venture travel services could provide more quality and service, while the current outbound market is price-driven.
But major domestic travel services said they are not worried about losing businesses to the newcomers.
Zhang Wei, general manager of the outbound department at the China International Travel Service head office, doubted whether foreign tour operators’ experience and purchasing advantage in destination countries would be useful in exploring the Chinese market.
An example she gave is that Chinese tourists have their own dining preferences, but hotels used by foreign tour operators may not give what Chinese want.
“Tourism is a service industry. I don’t know whether they are ready,” she said. “In the short term, I don’t see they will pose a threat to us.”
(Source: China Daily)
