Chinese Tourists Keen on Traveling to the USVI

Gov. Kenneth Mapp said Tuesday that the recent trade trip to China provided the opportunity for Virgin Islands travel authorities to meet Chinese officials regarding increased tourism to the territory.

He said Chinese oil and gas company Sinopec, the major petroleum storage customer at Limetree Bay Terminals on St. Croix, arranged meetings so Virgin Islanders could initiate conversations regarding increased Chinese tourism.

He said he and Tourism Commissioner Beverly Nicholson-Doty met with airline representatives as well as a “government-run, tour-operations facility that literally puts tours together for their private sector,” that understands where the people of China want to travel; where they visit.

We “participated in those meetings to understand how this will be put together, in terms of having visitors from China to the U.S. Virgin Islands,” he said.

“Sinopec is such a large entity in China that when it moved its headquarters from New York to Houston, Air China moved its route to Houston,” Mapp said.

He said Air China is a partner with United Airlines, which flies directly to St. Thomas from Houston.

Another popular airline provides charter airline visits from China to Cuba, Mapp said. “They believe that it makes sense to spend a second week from Cuba to the U.S. Virgin Islands, and they will be working with us on determining how that will be put together in the near future.”

Mapp said U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus and embassy staff “gave us an extensive briefing on the work that they do with U.S. businesses and U.S. jurisdictions doing business with companies and the government of China.”

“The U.S. embassy in China issues, on an annual basis, 10 million visas for folks from China to visit the United States,” Mapp said. “Over 3 million of those visas are directly related to vacations.”

Some of those travelers will want to visit the Virgin Islands because tourists like to go where China is investing, he said embassy staff told him.

“They, too, believe there is significant potential for the Virgin Islands to host Chinese visitors. That’s going to take work, because the visitors that are going to come from China” are the more affluent Chinese, who are very successful and want to venture far out of the region, he said.

Mapp said he got a report at the embassy on Chinese visitors going to the British Virgin Islands. They pass through St. Thomas to get to the British Virgin Islands, he said, so it is “not far-fetched” to try to get them to pause in St. Thomas.

“In fact, with Sinopec’s investment on St. Croix being ramped up to such a level, Ambassador Baucus was very clear that you can expect Chinese tourists and Chinese nationals to follow that investment,” he said.

Mapp said Doty and her team at Tourism will be taking additional trips to China “to further this work with the Chinese International Travel Service” and with the airlines.

Others, including the Economic Development Authority, will “have to have specified trade missions to the financial service sector in China to develop businesses under the EDA program,” Mapp said.

“I want to underscore that the government of the Virgin Islands is not changing its economic policy. We’re not changing the economy that we have now, that’s so vibrant and so beneficial to the territory, for Chinese investment,” Mapp said.

He said the territory will have to improve infrastructure and offer amenities favored by the Chinese. However, he said the key is to “make sure we have the best opportunities for folks to invest in the Virgin Islands, to create jobs, and to grow the economy.”

Source: The Virgin Islands Daily News