Las Vegas tourism officials eyeing high-spending Chinese visitors

Las Vegas tourism officials have expressed high hopes that high-spending Chinese tourists are going to make a beeline in the fastest growing Las Vegas tourism market. The city officials are looking forward to a series of nonstop flights from China.

Media reports said that Hainan Airlines is the first largest privately owned Chinese carrier to lead the charge with the launch of its first-ever nonstop flights to Las Vegas from Beijing in late November this year. The new service has been warmly welcomed by the city officials.

Chris Jones, Chief Marketing Officer for Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport, said, “Federal statistics indicated that about 363,000 Chinese tourists visited Las Vegas in 2015. The impressive data has come to the fore in the absence of any direct flight from China to Las Vegas. Now, with the first-ever nonstop flights being finally launched between Beijing and Las Vegas by Hainan Airlines, a significant increase in the numbers of Chinese tourists is expected in the coming years.”

The U.S. Department of Commerce also released a data saying that Las Vegas became the fourth-most-visited city in the United States by Chinese tourists in 2015. This also resulted in a total of 14 percent of Chinese visitors traveling to the United States. Among other three top U.S. cities attracting Chinese tourists in large numbers include Los Angeles (30 percent), New York (29 percent) and San Francisco (19 percent).

According to the reports, the U.S. Department of Commerce is positive and quite hopeful that the number of Chinese tourists visiting the United States is going to increase 16 percent every year. It is expected that an estimated 5 million Chinese tourists will visit the U.S. in 2020. Last year, nearly 2q.6 million Chinese tourists visited the U.S., and spent over $30 billion during the course of their stay.

If Hainan Airlines finally succeeds in proving that there is strong passenger demand for nonstop flights to Las Vegas from China year after year, then more Chinese carriers are likely to follow suit and launch new nonstop flights to Las Vegas in the coming years.