Pakistan eyes on attracting Chinese tourists by introducing new plans: official

ISLAMABAD, Sept. 6 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan is keen to attract Chinese outbound tourists to the scenic and historic sites of the country by adopting new plans to welcome them, caretaker Minister of State for Tourism Wasi Shah said.

Speaking at an event held here to celebrate the ongoing year as the year of tourism exchange between the two countries on Tuesday, Shah said that the year is not just a celebration, but an opportunity for Pakistan to shine on the global tourism stage by attracting Chinese tourists who are fond of exploring the world.

"Chinese citizens have demonstrated an increasing appetite for travel, both domestically and abroad, and every year Chinese tourists spend hundreds of billions of dollars on traveling, showing their enthusiasm for exploring the world, Pakistan can also get a share out of it if it succeeds in attracting even a small number of Chinese tourists," he said.

He added that in order to facilitate Chinese tourists, Pakistan has formed an E-portal through which Chinese tourists can also now apply for tourist visas online.

"We are also closely working with our embassy in Beijing, and they are doing their best to encourage Chinese tourists to visit Pakistan. They have been provided a lot of material on tourist sites of Pakistan which they have added on their website in the Chinese language to provide information for visitors interested to visit Pakistan," he added.

Talking to Xinhua on the sidelines of the event, the Managing Director of the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) Aftab ur Rehman Rana said that a delegation of tour operators from the PTDC will participate in the China Outbound Travel &Tourism Market in Beijing in November.

It will be greatly helpful to build business-to-business (B2B) linkage between the tour operators of both countries and as a result, tourist traffic between the two countries will further increase, he added.

Rana said that they have introduced different tour plans and translated them into Chinese language to give Chinese tourists basic information about Pakistani tourism sites and offer them different packages to visit Pakistan on short and long trips.