Brazil’s Minister of Tourism, Walfrido dos Mares Guia, and the ambassador of the People’s Republic of China, Jiang Yuande, met recently to discuss ways to increase tourism.
One of the topics on the table was preparing Brazilian tourist agencies to handle Chinese tourists who come to Brazil, as well as getting them to send Brazilians to China. And vice-versa in China.
Yuande reported that they gave each other a list of agencies in their countries that could engage in China-Brazil tourism. Brazil presented 25 tourist agencies, the Chinese presented a list of 627.
Ambassador Yuande said that one thing that had to be done was “prepare more Brazilian guides to speak Chinese.” Meanwhile, Mares Guia pointed out that Chinese tourists are the fifth largest group of travellers in the world nowadays.
No less than 22 million Chinese went abroad in 2004, but only 14,000 came to Brazil. The minister said his target was to triple that number by 2007.
ABr