On Sunday, Oct 31, 2010, the curtain finally came down on the Shanghai World Expo, but not before the 184 day world’s fair brought together 73 million visitors (3.5 million international visitors) and 190 participating nations, with a total of 264 participating organizations hosting visitors in 200 structures.

Shanghai World Expo 2010

By any standard, the size and scale is daunting and will be hard to replicate. The Expo clocked an average of 400,000 daily visitors and a peak of 1.03 million visitors on Oct 16.  China spent $4.2 billion on the event, and a mind-boggling $44 billion on infrastructure improvements.

They organized over 10,000 promotional events around the world and over 20,000 cultural events at the Expo, and over 2000 domestic & overseas media turned up to report on the Expo.  The massive coverage by international media resulted in over 19.3 million news mentions.

The same massive size and scale applies to the tourism impact of the Expo on Shanghai, not to mention the boost to the tourism economies of participating nations.

According to the CNTA (National Tourism Administration), the direct tourism income from the Shanghai World Expo runs to over $12 billion. In addition, the spillover effect to adjacent cities caused a 20% bump in tourism services demand.

All told, the number of inbound visitors reached almost 99.8 million in the first nine months of the year. Foreign exchange earnings from inbound visitors hit $33.7 billion – a 15.8% increase from last year.

Also, the benefit to the tourism economies of participating nations has been just as huge. Korea, whose Expo Pavilion attracted 7.25 million visitors, just came out with a report that says the number of Chinese who will visit Korea over the next three years will increase by 450,000, which adds another $562.4 million to the Korean tourism economy.

Canada is also gearing up for an onslaught of Chinese tourists. The Canadian Pavilion received over 6 million visitors, and Canada got itself listed as an ‘Approved Destination’ so that Chinese tourists can now visit Canada without any restrictions.

Individual destinations in the US, especially Hawaii, California and Texas, also did pretty well in ramping up their brand at the Expo. The San Francisco delegation led by Mayor Gavin Newsom got a very warm welcome and lots of publicity as Shanghai’s Sister City.

The very fact that the US had a country pavilion was sufficient to help improve perceptions. It attracted over 7 million visitors, and Jose Villarreal, the US Commissioner General, declared the mission accomplished. He says – quote “We were able to tell an America story in an interesting way to a large number of Chinese citizens, many of whom have had very little exposure to America.”

A study of Expo visitors conducted by Shanghai’s Fudan University before and after they visited the USA Pavilion seems to indicate that Villarreal could be right. According to the study, 95.2 percent of those surveyed said “they want to travel to the USA.”

At a meeting between China’s tourism industry and the CNTA, it was revealed that over two million Chinese tourists are expected to visit the United States by 2015. This year’s total of the number of Chinese tourists visiting the US may already have overshot the previous estimate of 556,000.

Photo – stefano meneghetti

The great travel trade wall of China is opening up a bit for foreign companies looking at a slice of international Chinese travelers. China has announced plans to gradually open up its overseas tour sector to foreign firms, according to a statement published on the Central Goverment website on Thursday.

Chinese travelers at Beijing Airport

Currently, only Chinese companies are allowed to offer overseas tourism services to residents. The statement does not include a time frame or details, but the move is reportedly a part of China’s strategy of putting more emphasis on the services sector.

The US received around 500,000 Chinese visitors last year with each tourist spending on average 23 nights and about $7,200 per trip – the highest of any international group.

The growing interest in Chinese tourists is personified by the increasing number of delegations and agreements signed between tourism companies on both sides.

U.S. and Chinese tourism officials met in Orlando in October for a two-day summit, where tourism officials from 30 Chinese provinces and 23 U.S. states were in attendance , including Chairman of the China National Tourism Administration Shao Qiwei and U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Roger Dow.

Sino US Tourism Summit, Orlando

On the state level, the California Travel & Tourism Commission is very much engaged with their tourism counterparts in China. The CTTC opened offices in China earlier this year, and signed MOU agreements with the tourism organizations of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

They headed a delegation to China on Nov 20 for the China International Travel Mart in Kunming, where they met with over 200 travel trade and media professionals, updating them on new products for the Chinese market and the latest destination developments.

Caroline Beteta, CTTC president, said that “Although we saw a record 273,000 visitors from China in 2008 with $398 million in visitor expenditures, this lucrative market has enormous potential for California.”

They also unveiled new California tour packages, called California Travel Meals – multi-theme, menu-style travel itineraries developed in cooperation with China’s leading tour operators and airlines.

Hawaii and Las Vegas are said to be interested in working in tandem to work out an arrangement where incoming tourists staying for multiple weeks could stopover in Hawaii on the way to Las Vegas.

Currently, there are no direct flights from China to Hawaii. But that could be remedied as early as next year, and the Hawaii Tourism Authority has budgeted nearly $2.7m this year for marketing in China and South Korea. They’re also arranging for travel industry employees to take classes in basic Chinese phrases and customs.

Even China’s neighbors are gearing up to increase their share of the rising number of Chinese travelers. Yoshiaki Hompo, the head of the Japan Tourism Agency, said in an interview that Japan is planning to ease the visa regulations for Chinese travelers, and they’re looking at getting 9 million Chinese visitors by 2019. Chinese arrivals in Japan for October jumped 25%.

With the increasing access and resources for international leisure travel and tours available to Chinese travelers, coupled with the opening up of the sector to international competition, the Chinese overseas tourism market looks all set to heat up even faster.

Air China photo by gruntzooki; Sino-US Summit photo courtesy U.S. Travel Association