6,000 guests and 70 flights: ‘Biggest Chinese tour group to US’ touches down

10 years ago | Posted in: Business | 580 Views

The largest Chinese tour group ever to head to the United States descended on Los Angeles over the past week, requiring 70 commercial flights to shuttle more than 6,000 visitors.

The tourists are employees of a Guangdong-based, Malaysian-funded direct-selling firm, Perfect (China) Company, known for rewarding its Chinese workers with free trips.

The first group that arrived on Wednesday were taken on a shopping spree at South Coast Plaza, a shopping mall in Costa Mesa.

“We served 34 vans of Chinese tourists today,” the plaza posted on Sina Weibo, with pictures showing the local retail giant rolling out the red carpet for mainlanders and sending senior staff to greet them.

All 6,000 guests will be divided into hundreds of smaller tour groups with different focuses, such as shopping and sight-seeing, according to a spokesman for China International Travel Service (CITS), which planned the trip for Perfect.

The visitors will attend a seminar and a grand banquet tomorrow in Orange County, where Perfect’s CEO will meet them.

“It marks the largest Chinese tour group to the States,” said Sunny Wang, spokesperson of Brand USA, a semi-official not-for-profit travel association, set up by the Obama administration to promote US tourism.

Brand USA assisted the tour groups in liaising with airports and local tour agencies.

Beverly Hills, Santa Monica Beach and other California hotspots braced for the hordes of customers from the world’s second-largest economy.

Despite their deep pockets, mainland Chinese tourists were voted the second least-liked tourists, after Americans, in the world, based on a 2012 survey of 5,600 people globally….. see more

source: scmp.com

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