Building a tourist industry that helps foreigners

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By Victor Paul Borg (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-24 07:34

The paradox of tourism in China is that despite an unforgettable range of attractions, the country is a frustrating destination for foreign tourists. There are other contradictions. The tourist infrastructure is good (hotels, restaurants, and transport network), but not readily accessible; the people are inquisitive and hospitable, but the country remains aloof and inscrutable for most foreigners.

Among the reasons for these dichotomies, the biggest is the inability of most people who work in tourism to speak English. It's a vexing situation, when you cannot communicate with your client.

I know that this is old news, and that things are changing; students are learning English from younger age and for longer, and tourism authorities are eager to foster English proficiency among tourism service providers.

But I'm reiterating this news here because in the course of my work - travel writing - I can see that most tourism departments can do more to dismantle the language barrier in the short term by some direct measures that could yield immediate economic gains.

I'll discuss these later; first, let me illustrate how this dispirits foreign tourists, costing China potential gains - the language barrier is one of the main reasons why the number of foreign visitors remains relatively low compared to the diversity and size of the country.

For a non-Chinese speaker, something as simple as finding and buying a ticket for an internal flight, or figuring out which bus goes to where and then getting to the bus station, becomes a complex multi-hour task, like playing treasure hunt.

Or let's say a foreigner goes to a restaurant to eat, and, finding no English menu, is forced to make his choices in either one of two ways: either point at pictures of dishes on the menu, or go inside the kitchen and point out the individual ingredients.

Both ways lead to hits and misses; pictures don't always reveal the type of meat in the dish, or whether a dish is spicy or sour or sweet, so the diner is likely to end up with something he doesn't like - perhaps intestines or pig's ears, or another foodstuff that's a delicacy for Chinese but distasteful for most foreigners. And if a foreigner points out the ingredients, he still has no influence on how the ingredients are cooked and what they are mixed with.

This is one example of how China remains distant: China has great food, but foreigners end up with dishes that don't impress them because they have no way of ordering what they like.

Yet it's easy for tourism departments to change this with direct measures by having each province set up a team that helps restaurants in tourist areas to design new menus that would have English translations (this is something that has been done in Beijing as part of the run-up to the Olympics).

Another thing that can be done is setting up a 24-hour hotline for tourists that would be modeled on the existing 114 hotline: tourists can call this hotline to find out transport options to wherever they want to go, the availability of hotels, addresses and opening hours of museums and other sights, and other similar things. Such a hotline would ensure a smoother and more rewarding experience in China.

The benefits of carrying out these changes can yield quick results in larger volumes of tourists, as the experience of provinces that have made some headway in this direction shows. For example, an official in Sichuan once asked me why Yunnan gets more foreign tourists than Sichuan, yet the latter had more spectacular mountains and more diverse attractions.

The reason is English proficiency: along the classical tourist route in Yunnan, from Kunming to Dali to Lijiang to Shangri La, foreigners find a network of hotels and restaurants and cafes where English is spoken or at least is on the menu. But this isn't the case in Sichuan; for example, out of more than 90 hotels in Jiuzhaigou, only at two of them - the only two five-star hotels - can anyone speak communicable English.

These difficulties also force most foreigners to travel in organized groups in China, even though foreigners prefer to travel independently.

Problem is that independent travel is frustrating in China partly because of the language barrier, and partly because many destinations or attractions in China are set up to cater for group travel.

This is because Chinese tourists - who account for the vast majority of tourists within China - mostly travel in groups on short trips. Foreigners travel differently, and they come from afar, so they would spend at least two weeks to justify the hassle and cost of long flights.

But the infrastructure for independent travelers is inadequate in some far-off out-of-cities destinations, such as the outdoor attractions and the ethnic villages of western China, which is the region that's most exotic from a tourism viewpoint. For example, I was in Kanas national park in Xinjiang the other week, and I couldn't find buses from Bu'erjin, the nearest county, to Kanas. I had to resort to taking a taxi, which was expensive given the distance and the drivers' unscrupulousness in prizing a high price from tourists who don't have another choice.

Now the chief of Altai tourism, in charge of Kanas, is meticulous in his job. When I went to talk to him, he rapped out statistics and explained the details of the management plan without consulting any notes, something that shows he's done a lot of research and spent a long time drawing up the plan.

But the infrastructure in Kanas was being planned mostly for the needs and whims of Chinese tourists traveling in groups in buses. There is nothing wrong with this - we are in China here, and Chinese tourists come first - but a successful tourist destination is one that caters for all the different ranges in tastes, whether that's someone doing a fast tour or someone staying longer and seeking adventure.

Most Chinese - like most Asians - don't like walking, so they visit outdoor attractions in national parks or reserves in a bus tour. Foreigners are different: they like to walk or do some other kind of activity.

But in Kanas - as well as elsewhere in outdoorsy landscapes - the emphasis is on travel in a bus. There are walks that people can do in these places; in Kanas, there are two short walks, and another two two-day-each trudges over high mountains.

But the walks are not well promoted; the reason is that officials think from a narrow Chinese viewpoint, and give the walks low priority. This then becomes a self-fulfilling cycle: only a trickle of foreigners visit, hardly anyone goes hiking, and the walks become an even more marginal activity.

So, once again, the end result is a setup that doesn't pander to foreigners' titillations or habits. (On the other hand, Chinese habits are also changing; young people from Guangdong and other coastal cities are increasingly taking to independent and active travel, and this is a trend that tourism officials should nudge along as a way to protect the landscape integrity in wilderness areas. It's better to have people doing more walking than scar the landscapes by roads - and less roads would catalyze the growing interest among the Chinese to go walking.)

One place that caters for tastes across the spectrum is Yanghsuo in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. An increasing number of young Chinese and foreigners visit independently and lodge in town, where staff members in hotels speak English, and restaurants and bars have English menus.

Good maps and bicycles for rent are also widely available, allowing foreigners to go cycling on their own. Rock climbing is another growing activity - climbers can find a guidebook to rock climbing, fellow climbers to team up with, climbing agencies whose guides talk English - and that's why Yangshuo is on the way to becoming the most popular destination for rock climbing in Asia.

Hundreds of thousands of foreigners now visit annually; equally, other provinces can also lure more foreign tourists by developing the infrastructure to satisfy foreigners' needs and tastes.

The author is a Maltese travel journalist

(China Daily 07/24/2008 page9)