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58 BCBusiness July 2014 Two thousand and nine was a pivotal year because that's when the Canadian government set aside differences with China over human rights concerns and earned a spot on Chi- na's coveted list of nations with Approved Destination Status. With ADS in hand, travel to Canada was open to all ordinary Chinese citizens with financial means and no longer restricted to students, diplomats and business people. China has become the world's biggest travel market, with more than 80 million tourists travelling annually and spending in excess of $100 bil- lion worldwide. B.C. now wants its share, but the change in market has many implications, both positive and negative, for tourism operators and businesses across the province. For inbound tour receptors such as Vancouver's TPI Silk- way—which organizes five- to eight-day-long bus and train tours of Vancouver, Victoria, Whistler and the Rockies, as well as eastern Canada— ADS coupled with a rapidly growing Chinese middle class has been a boon to business. "I've been in this business since 1999," says Roy Chou, director of sales at TPI Silkway, from his Richmond office. "When Canada got ADS approved, it was a huge jump for operators like us." In 2009 TPI handled 559 clients from Mainland China; the following year the company handled 2,561, and by 2012 that number had jumped to 7,000 (representing more than 1,100 per cent growth from pre- ADS days). The company has had to triple its Richmond staff, to 12, to accommodate the growth, as well as add four sales reps in China. TPI Silkway is not alone. CAL Travel and Tours, which offers railway and bus tours, golf vacations, northern lights tours and other packaged trips to a Southeast Asian clientele, used to focus almost entirely on business and government travellers for its Chinese market; since the change with ADS, the Rich- mond-based operator has seen business from China take off. In 2009, Chinese nationals accounted for just eight per cent of the 2,670 clients CAL handled; last year the company made travel arrangements for 2,000 Mainland Chinese residents, representing half of its business. it's the season of summer holidays and those hearty American, German and British tourists will be hitting the roads in RVs and rental cars, checklist in hand, to tackle the iconic attractions of B.C.'s great outdoors. Yet as important as this stereotypical adventurous tourist remains to the local economy, they are no longer the central focus of the folks who market B.C. to the world. These days the roads of Vancouver, Victoria and Whistler are increasingly clogged with busloads of camera-clicking, gift-shop-loving, hop-on- and-off tourists from Mainland China, a remarkable contrast to the independent Anglo-Euro adventure traveller of old. Last year Chinese visitors surpassed the United Kingdom, perennial second-place finisher to the Americans, with a whopping 203,100 visa entries to B.C.—up 26.1 per cent from 2012. Since 2009, there's been a more than 100 per cent jump in Chi- nese visitors sleeping, sightseeing and dining in our province. photo op More than 200,000 Chinese visited B.C. last year, many of them taking in iconic attractions such as the Stanley Park seawall and Lions Gate Bridge. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ p056-061_ChineseTourists_july.indd 58 2014-05-29 10:08 AM