英国采取措施吸引中国游客

Thanks to its growing middle class, China has the fastest growing tourism industry in the world and every year more decided to holiday overseas. But so far Britain’s complex visa rules have seen the country missing out on this boom. As CCTV's Jack Barton reports, that’s a problem the U.K. has begun trying to fix even before this week's visit by President Xi Jinping put the country firmly in China’s spotlight.

Chinese tourists are expected to spend the equivalent of more than one and a half billion U.S. dollars in Britain this yea, much of it in London.

"We’re seeing Chinese tourist numbers growing very rapidly to the UK every year. Last year there was 400,000 Chinese coming into the UK, coming though London."

That sounds like good news for London except that about three times as many Chinese tourists visit the French capital Paris and it’s not just because Big Ben is so much shorter than the Eiffel tower.

"France and most other European countries are in the Schengen zone, which means if you get a visa for one country you automatically have a visa for the rest. But Britain, remains outside the Schengen passport free zone and plans to stay there."

Britain’s government thinks it may have found a solution.

"The exciting thing is we can now parallel process a Schengen visa and a U.K. visa at the same time," Christopher Rodrigues, visit Britain, said.

The process is still costly and time consuming so the Brits have come up with another sweetener to attract more Chinese tourists.

"Our leading finance minister has initiated a scheme to bring 50,000 additional visitors from China not having to pay for a visa so it’s a free visa scheme,"  Christopher Rodrigues, visit Britain, said.

Britain is also re-branding several famous tourist destinations in Mandarin, with Savile Row being translated in English as "Tall, Rich Handsome Street" and London’s tallest building the Shard becoming "Star Plucking Tower." The initiatives appear to be working, because Chinese tourist numbers are growing in the U.K. though the industry believes the true potential remains untapped. Though Chinese visitors account for less than three percent of total tourism spending. London is currently the world’s most popular tourist destination. Britain hopes that on top of all its other measures this week’s visit by the Chinese President Xi Jinping will also help give Chinese tourism here a big boost.