China and the United States are scheduled to kick off the
2016 US-China Tourism Year at a ceremony in Beijing on Monday. Brand USA, a
public-private partnership that promotes the US as a travel destination, is
expected to host the ceremony for the year-long program of activities that was
an outcome of President Xi Jinping's state visit to the US in September 2015. Throughout
the year, the US Department of Commerce and the China National Tourism Administration
(CNTA), in collaboration with Brand USA and other partners, will host events
and activities to promote travel between the two countries.
US President Barack Obama will be featured in a video
message promoting the year on the US Embassy website starting on Tuesday. From
the US perspective, the Tourism Year offers the chance to build on the current
double-digit growth in arrivals from China, expanding the US share of the
nearly 100 million Chinese visitors traveling each year. Both sides have
attributed the key to achieving this goal to the 2014 announcement by the two
governments of a reciprocal extension of visa validity for tourist and business
travel from one to 10 years, and student travel from one to five years.
An estimated 2 million Americans have visited China annually
in recent years. In 2015, 2.5 million Chinese traveled to the US in 2015 and
the number is expected to hit 2.97 million in 2016. Chinese visitors spent
$23.8 billion while in the country in 2014, according to the Commerce
Department, accounting for 57 percent of services exports to China. Travel and
tourism is the US' largest services export, generating nearly $220.8 billion
and supporting more than 1.1 million US jobs, according to the Commerce
Department. Read full story on China Daily.
