More Chinese tourists will be heading to California beaches and New York retailers in the United States this year than ever before, as Obama plans to open the flood gates to let in more big spenders from across the Pacific.

 

President Barack Obama said that doesn’t just want to bring in more Chinese, but as many foreign tourists as possible.  Right now, though, China tourism is hotter than new love.  And so, the President signed a memorandum giving secretaries at the Homeland Security and Commerce departments four months to come up with a plan to streamline the entry process for foreign visitors to reduce wait times.  Although China is getting no special treatment, it will be the Chinese that take advantage of the process as their tourist numbers balloon.

 

  

Around 1.8 million Chinese tourists visited the U.S. in 2013, and that number is expected to grow by 21% in to 2.1 million this year.  The National Travel & Tourism Office of the U.S. Department of Commerce is forecasting around 72 million international tourists this year, up from 70 million last year.  China’s growth rate is outpacing every country that has a sizable tourism presence in the U.S. Moreover, Commerce forecasts that China’s growth rate will far surpass that of other major origin countries for the next four years, including Brazil.  In fact, China is expected to beat Brazil in the number of U.S. bound travelers next year, with 2.6 million expected to Brazil’s 2.5 million.  Within three years, China will be second only to the U.K. in terms of annual visitors outside of North America.  Canada and Mexico are still the top tourist markets for the U.S. bound travelers.

 

“I want to turn the 70 million tourists that came last year into 100 million by the beginning of the next decade,” Obama said Thursday while touring the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. “We have a great product here. Nothing says ‘Made in America’ better than the Empire State Building,” he said.

 

Travel and tourism brought in $1.5 trillion to the U.S. economy in 2013, supporting 8 million jobs, according to Obama.