Britain woos Chinese visitors by easing restrictions on visas
Print Edition
Britain says it will make it easier for Chinese citizens to obtain visas to the country as it seeks a bigger slice of the multi-billion-dollar Chinese traveller cake.
Britain’s Finance Minister George Osborne, who is leading a trade delegation to China, said yesterday that the new measures would help the tens of thousands of Chinese visitors hoping to visit Britain.
“Have announced new measures to simplify + speed up visa applications for visitors from #China,” Osborne said on his official Twitter account.
“Good for tourism and British business,” he said.
Under the proposals, Chinese tourists visiting the European Union using selected travel agencies will no longer have to file a separate application to visit Britain, which is not part of the European Union’s “Schengen Area” for border-free travel.
Business people will also be able to apply for a “super-priority” visa, which will be processed within 24 hours rather than a week.
Osborne also said the government was looking at a nationwide rollout of its “mobile visa service,” which is currently being piloted in Shanghai and Beijing.
The service — aimed at business executives — enables visa teams to go to applicants’ workplaces to collect their forms and biometric data.
Some 210,000 visas were issued to Chinese nationals in 2012, adding around US$480 million to the British economy. There are currently 39 weekly flights between London and four cities in China.
Chinese students also make up the largest group of foreign nationals in UK’s schools and universities, according to the UK consulate in Shanghai.
The UK is also the number one destination for Chinese investment in Europe, attracting nearly US$102 billion in the last year alone, and more than 600 Chinese businesses which now have a presence in the UK.
According to the United Nations’ World Tourism Organization, China has become the world’s most valuable source of tourists, with expenditure on travel abroad reaching US$102 billion in 2012.
However, France attracted 1.4 million tourists from China last year — around six times as many as Britain, according to the survey by the European research firm Euromonitor International.
Among the western European countries, Britain was also behind Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Spain, leaving it in sixth place, the survey showed.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
