Chinese travelers to Canada up 15.5% in 2012

VANCOUVER - Canada's designation as an Approved Destination Status (ADS) nation is paying dividends for the country's travel sector as more than 273,000 Chinese tourists visited it in 2012, a 15.5-percent jump over the previous year.

According to new figures released recently by the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC), the national tourism marketing arm, China has become Canada's fastest growing market for visitors since the country received the ADS designation in June 2010.

In 2011, the first full year of ADS, Canada received 236,700 Chinese visitors.

Last year, Chinese tourists, staying an average of 29.8 nights, collectively spent C$485.5 million ($466.7 million), up 19.2 percent year-on-year.

Apart from the neighboring United States, traditionally Canada's largest tourism market, the number of Chinese tourists to Canada stood at 4th after Britain (597,000 visitors), France (422,800) and Germany (276,600).

Greg Klassen, the CTC's senior vice-president, marketing strategy and communications, called the numbers encouraging with the significant increase in both the volume of travelers from China and the amount of money they were spending while abroad.

"We expect the same this year as well. We think that it will eventually slow down, but we do know that the Chinese interest in travel outbound will reach about 100 million travelers by the year 2020, and we want a piece of that," he said.

"It"s a pretty significant contribution they're making to Canada's tourism economy, which of course includes ad hoc shopping, hotels, restaurants and those kinds of things."