Can one measure the success of a country by the number of tourists that it produces? As the Chinese economy continues to balloon and catapult the country into the first world, the emerging middle class are starting to flex their travel muscles.
Now they can flex them even further. Just this past week the United States and Chinese governments signed an agreement making it easier for the American tourist industry to court Chinese travelers. New York and Nevada even went so far as to get special permission to market their wares to the far east.
Don’t expect to fleece any of these tourist groups out of their hard earned communist yuan though. As our colleagues over at Intelligent Travel reported last week, tourist groups are having none of the bundled hijinks that tour operators have been throwing at them.
I suppose if the economy needs to recover we need to encourage as much tourism as possible. While the Chinese aren’t coming overseas necessarily based on the strength of the yuan (it seems to be more of a novelty at this point), I wonder if we’ll ever reach the point where the Asians are coming to the US for cheap stuff.