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A combination of Hollywood branding at home and early adopter advocacy in China have resulted in double digit growth in visitation for the last five consecutive years.
Last year, China surpassed Canada as the number one international inbound travel market into Los Angeles.
Ernest Wooden Jr., president and CEO of Discover Los Angeles, visited Skift's New York office recently to discuss how the destination marketing organization was one of the first U.S. tourist boards to open an office in Beijing over a decade ago.
Since then, members of the bureau and other tourism and economic stakeholders in L.A. have worked with local Chinese airlines and tour operators to drive higher levels of inbound traffic year-over-year.
Additionally, almost 200 U.S. and Chinese tourism leaders gathered in Los Angeles to discuss new partnerships and policies in September 2015 for the 9th annual U.S.-China Leadership Summit. Wooden says that kind of collaboration is one of the reasons why Chinese arrivals has surged 523% in the last decade, with double digit increases in the last five consecutive years.
"Most people in the U.S. never thought about China when we opened up our office 10 years ago, when the Chinese didn't even register in terms of visitation in the top 10," Wooden Jr. told us. "But we saw this coming, and sure enough it's happening. The growth is just phenomenal. Last year was 22% growth year-over-year. So far this year, it's 20% over last year."
Following is an overview of the Chinese market's evolution and how Wooden Jr. sees it growing in the future.
Skift: How big of a market is the Chinese?
Ernest Wooden Jr.: Last year about 107 million of them traveled the world, so they're the number one ethnicity traveling today. The fact that the Chinese market is our number one international market speaks about the power of the Chinese traveler now.
We've had a presence very early on as a DMO, going back to when we opened up our first office exactly 10 years ago. Two and a half years ago, we opened a new office in Shanghai. Then about six months ago we went further south, closer to Hong Kong, to Guangzhou. Guangzhou is a very large and very well-known populous area, and an international trading area. I suspect that within the next 12 months or so we will expand even further west into China.
Skift: How successful have you been in attracting more direct airlift?
Wooden Jr.: The reason for our expansion, opening offices in China, is because we're having great success in getting flights to come nonstop into Los Angeles. Guangzhou is the home of China Southern Air
