US wilderness a magnet for Chinese tourists

NEW YORK — About 10 years ago, Jin Chen’s parents didn’t know much about Alaska, where she was studying. Their neighbors often confused the remote US state with Las Vegas, a city known in China for its casinos.

But Alaska, with its vast wilderness, is now among the hot destinations in the United States for deep-pocketed Chinese tourists.

“Our business has seen an annual increase of over 50 percent in recent years,” said Jin Chen, chief executive officer of Alaska Skylar Travel, which caters to Asian markets by coordinating Mandarin-speaking tours to Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city.

Alaska has become a top choice for young Chinese tourists who have visited the US more than once, Chen said. The state’s natural beauty, glimpsed in the aurora borealis and glaciers, is attractive to many, who prefer it over the crowded megacity life in New York and Los Angeles.

Deb Hickok, president and chief executive of Explore Fairbanks, a nonprofit organization promoting tourism in Alaska’s second-largest city, Fairbanks, also noticed the new trend.

“The aurora is a big driver for Chinese tourism in our area and we see rapid growth,” Hickok said.

With help from Chen’s company, Anchorage and Fairbanks have undertaken a “China Ready” program, helping the travel industry with materials, training, guides and tools to understand, target and accommodate the market, she said.

Alaska, dubbed the last frontier, is just one of the areas of wilderness in the US that young Chinese tourists with disposable income are seeking out.

Great expectations

According to the National Travel and Tourism Office of the US Department of Commerce, in 2016 there were 2.97 million arrivals from China, making it the fifthlargest source country in international visits to the United States. Of those arrivals, 1.2 million (about 41 percent) visited national parks or monuments.

The film America Wild: National Parks Adventure garnered 1 million views in October on Youku, a Chinese video platform, just four months after its digital debut, according to Tom Garzilli, chief marketing officer of Brand USA.

The US tourism marketing organization’s partnership with Youku to launch the action-packed adventure film was a “perfect example” of its marketing efforts targeting an entirely new spectrum, including millennials who use digital streaming services at a higher rate in China, Garzilli said.

The film was developed as a cornerstone of Brand USA’s Great Outdoors campaign, which it launched in 2015 and presented in giantscreen theaters in 14 markets worldwide, including China.

Garzilli said surveys showed 81 percent of international audiences who viewed the film indicated they were more likely to visit the United States after watching it.

In April, US Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke announced that 2016 was a record year for visits to National Park Service sites, which received 331 million visitors and contributed nearly $35 billion to the US economy — a nearly $3 billion increase from 2015.

China rising

According to Garzilli, China ranked seventh in total tourism-related spending in the United States a decade ago. After nearly a decade of double-digit growth, it dominates the rankings as the largest market for US tourism exports, injecting more than $90 million a day into the US economy.

“Outbound travel from China has been nothing short of explosive,” Garzilli said.

Over the past decade, Chinese visitors to the United States have grown nearly tenfold, from 320,000 arrivals in 2006 to over 3 million in 2016, which was designated as the China-US Tourism Year.