Self-study activity:
Watch the clip by clicking on the picture below or on the BBC link above and answer the questions about it.
The activity is suitable for intermediate students.
1 How many international tourists visited the shopping area [Bicester Village] last year?
2 How much does a Chinese tourist spend?
3 How many Chinese tourists visit the UK every year?
4 What factor contributed to an increase in Chinese tourists last year?
5 What different steps to attract Chinese tourists does Patricia Yates from Visit Britain mention?
6 What is the major obstacle for Chinese tourists to visit the UK?
7 Why are US, Germany and France mentioned at the end?
To check your answers, you can read the transcript below.
Greeted in Madarin in shops which accept Chinese credit. It’s a welcome appreciated in high sales.
The Chinese market is very, very important to us. Last year we had about 60% of all our visitors who were international tourists and a very significant proportion of these were Chinese. The Chinese love the brands. They love the atmosphere here and they particularly love Great Britain and England and all that is English.
So many brand in China are very, very expensive. Shopping mainly attracts the price.
I think mainly the price and the quality, that’s the sort of thing that we are looking for really.
Buy the Dior and Prada,and Mulbury’s.
The Chinese are big spenders and that's why places like Bicester Village are so keen to attract them. They spend on average three times more than other international visitors, but other countries have also picked up on this trend and are more successful. France, for example, attracts around a million Chinese tourists every year. The UK manages just over 150,000.
The Olympic effect did help boost numbers by another 20% last year, but Visit Britain, the agency responsible for promoting the UK abroad, says Britain is still lagging behind, and it should be a wake-up call for the tourism industry.
What can we do? Well we can think where the population is in China and not just in Shanghai and Beijing, but those major second-tier cities, making sure they understand what the experience is of coming to Britain. They do expect Mandarin-speaking tour guides, they do expect Mandarin ads, they do expect that sort of Chinese concept of welcome.
But the major obstacle is the fact that a separate visa is needed for the UK. For as they can travel under just one cheap visa around 26 other European countries. So for now purchases by other nationalities dwarf the amount of those made by the Chinese. The US, France and Germany still remain Britain’s most important inbound markets in terms of spend and accounting for a third of all trips to the UK. But with the Chinese already spending more on travelling the world than any other nationality, if they take home memories of a warm British welcome it could help businesses here tap the potential of a huge overseas market. This is Susannah Streeter, BBC News.
