China’s reluctant tourists puzzle officials

Officials across government are scrambling to repair a rift between cabinet ministers about whether Britain is falling behind other European countries in the race to attract wealthy Chinese tourists.

Policy makers met at the Home Office on Thursday to thrash out how to measure tourist figures amid a sea of conflicting data which has mired cabinet discussions in confusion. While some ministers fear the perception of a complicated UK visa regime is causing Britain to lose out on Chinese visitors, the Home Office has disputed this.

Figures from the UK Border Agency show that 267,000 visas were issued to Chinese nationals in 2011, while separate data from the Office for National Statistics suggests that the number of actual visits by Chinese tourists to the UK was 147,000 in that year. By contrast, data from the French equivalent of ONS shows that 1.2m Chinese tourists arrived in France in 2011.

Last month Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, wrote to his counterparts at the Home Office and Foreign Office to express his anxieties about the issue.

“I am concerned that we are in danger of allowing competing sets of statistics to obscure a fundamental underlying – and worrying – trend of outperformance and superior growth in other European destination countries,” Mr Hunt wrote.

Soon after coming to power in 2010, David Cameron voiced his frustration that the UK was not attracting more Chinese visitors. “We’re [the Chinese’s] 22nd most popular destination, but Germany is forecast to break into their top ten,” he said in a speech on tourism in central London. “Why can’t we?”

The Home Office has pointed out that it has deployed more staff in China to speed the processing of visas, and William Hague, the foreign secretary, has argued that the UK has seen a significant growth in visa allocations to China.

But retailers in the luxury sector fear that the perception of the UK having a fortresslike visa system is restricting the number of Chinese big spenders.

“We are exploring tangible suggestions for making a significant difference to Chinese visitor numbers,” said Guy Salter, deputy chairman of Walpole, the British consortium of luxury brands.

Several groups including Walpole and the New West End Company, which represents retailers operating on the lucrative stretches of Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street, are pushing for change. Their aim is to resolve the need for Chinese visitors to buy two visas – one for European countries in the Schengen zone and a separate one for the UK

“The issue is not the amount of visas being given out, but a better way of having one visa,” a spokesman for the New West End Company said. It says the UK missed out on £1.2bn of spending by Chinese consumers last year. It predicts this could rise to £3.1bn by 2020.

The UK Border Agency maintains that its visa application process is geared up to be as simple as possible while also keeping the border secure.

Visit Britain, the UK’s national tourism agency, admitted that the government “could be doing more to attract visitors”, but suggested that boosting visitor numbers was also about increasing aviation capacity.

The organisation has increased its China-based staff from four to six in recent years, and launched a £25m advertising campaign in nine countries identified as important sources of tourists to the UK, including China.