London, Apr. 20 (People's Daily Online) — VisitBritain’s work to increase the welcome and services that Chinese visitors to England experience has been recognised with a gold award in the service quality category of the Chinese Tourist Welcome Awards 2016 held in Beijing.

Chinese visitors are already some of the UK’s highest spenders, spending on average £2,688 a head, and VisitBritain has ambitions to double spend from Chinese visitors to £1 billion by 2020.

The award is in recognition of the more than 260 tourism industry professionals from 70 organisations ranging from castles and stately homes, destination management organisations and tour operators, to retailers and attraction providers from across the North of England, who took part in VisitBritain’s China Welcome Training programme held between October 2015 and March 2016.

The training considered Chinese tourists’ motivations and expectations when they travel, how businesses can adapt their products and marketing to meet these needs, and the importance of providing services in Chinese, amongst other topics. Ninety per cent of those who took part in the course said they were planning to make changes to their business within six months as a result of the training. 

VisitBritain Director Patricia Yates said: “China is the world’s largest outbound market and a huge tourism opportunity for Britain. We want to deliver a world-class experience for Chinese visitors, maximizing their spend and stay, to support our ambition of making Britain the most welcoming destination in Europe, so we are honoured to receive this endorsement of our work.”

Other developments to promote the UK’s competitive tourism offer in China include a new direct airline route from Beijing to Manchester. The new route, operated by Hainan Airlines, becomes operational from June 2016 and will offer up to four direct flights per week from Beijing to Manchester, making it easier for Chinese visitors to explore the UK’s northern regions.

Latest figures from VisitBritain show that visits from China were up 37% in the first nine months of 2015, smashing previous records. There were 214,000 visits from China from January to September, beating the number of visits for all of 2014, with figures for the last quarter of 2015 still to come. (Bai Tianxing)