Wells to benefit from boost to Chinese tourism trade?

mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">It has been suggested that thousands of

pounds could be injected to the Wells economy if an anticipated influx of

Chinese tourists occurs.

 

Stephanie Cheng, managing director of

China Holidays recently visited the county to get a taste of some of what

Somerset has to offer as an international tourism destination.

 

Included on her tour was Wells

Cathedral, Wookey Hole caves, Clarks Village and Cheddar Gorge and caves.

 

If China Holidays likes what Somerset

has to offer, it could be promoted as a tourism destination to their clients

from September.

 

China is a booming economy and has been

identified as a growth tourism market.

 

With every Chinese tourist estimated to

spend £1,000 in the local economy, Somerset County Council and Somerset Tourism

Association have been working closely with the Chinese authorities to illustrate

the wonders of Somerset.

 

Councillor David Hall, Cabinet Member

for Strategic Planning said: "The Chinese are now recognised as being

bigger spenders than the Arabs, Russians or Americans and their visit will give

a tremendous boost to Somerset’s economy and local employment.”

 

John Turner, Director of Somerset

Tourism Association added: "Currently Somerset has 0.5% of the market

share of Chinese tourists, if we could only increase this to just 2.5%, this

could add hundreds of thousands pounds of spending to our economy and could

mean as many as 10,000 new jobs.”

 

With John Penrose MP also visiting

Wells yesterday it would appear that there’s plenty of cause for optimism for the city and its

businesses so we will watch with interest how this pans out.