Mark Ralston / AFP – Getty Images

Chinese tourists pose for photos in front of a portrait of the late Chairman Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Feb. 27, 2012.

By Bo Gu, NBC News
BEIJING – It can be exorbitantly expensive to travel in China – and Chinese tourists are fed-up.

For instance, Sanya, a big resort city on China’s southern tropical island province of Hainan, is usually a dream destination for winter holiday makers. But it is becoming a target of netizens complaining about being ruthlessly ripped off there. One irate tourist recently complained on Weibo, China’s popular Twitter-like microblogging site, that he paid almost $635 dollars for a meal of three dishes including one fish.

Tourists everywhere could complain about getting gouged.  But it seems that Chinese tourists truly are justified in their gripes.

For example, a recent study published by Netease.com, one of China’s biggest Web portals,  borrowed the concept of the Big Mac index from the Economist to compare the prices of tourist attractions in both China and overseas.

The Economist’s Big Mac index is based on the “theory of purchasing-power parity.”

They use the cost of a Big Mac in the U.S. as a benchmark and compare it to the local cost of a Big Mac to create a comparison between the currencies.

The Netease.com article borrowed the Big Mac index idea to compare entrance fees charged at Chinese tourist attractions versus those overseas.

The statistics are eye-opening.

Andy Wong / AP

Tourists visit Tiananmen Gate on China’s National Day in Beijing on Oct. 1, 2011

For example, the cost of admission to Jiuzhaigou National Park in southwest China, a U.N. biosphere reserve famous for its shimmering turquoise lakes and snow-crusted mountain peaks, costs 220 Yuan ($35) to get in, or, 14.3 Big Macs.

In contrast, Yellowstone National Park costs an adult entering by foot or bike $12 dollars, the equivalent of 2.7 Big Macs. (It costs $25 dollars for one vehicle, including all passengers).

In Paris, the Louvre Museum costs 2.9 Big Macs, while a ticket to China’s Palace Museum inside the Forbidden City in Beijing is as much as 3.9 Big Macs.

The well-known Great Wall just outside Beijing also looks expensive – its cost is 2.9 Big Macs, compared to the Taj Mahal, which is a quarter of one Big Mac (for Indian tourists; foreigners are charged more).

No regulation
“There’s no government supervision of ticket prices,” said Wu Jingmin, a former tour guide who agitated the tourism industry in 2006 by publishing his book “How Can I Not Rip You Off? – A Tour Guide’s Monologue.” In the book, Wu exposed how the industry scams tourists, from tour agencies to restaurants and even local governments.

Besides high admission fees in China, travelers also often have to pay additional costs at tourist sites for such items as shuttle buses or cable cars.

At Changbaishan, the sacred mountain on the border of China and North Korea, a tourist must buy three different tickets at $16 a piece if they wish to take in the view from its three different peaks, and that doesn’t include the extra $14 for the shuttle bus.

Chinese tourists also normally travel during one of the three one-week-long national holidays.  Even if that means going to Beijing’s Forbidden City with 130,000 more visitors than on a usual day, or slowly pushing their way forward on the Great Wall when it is as packed as a rush hour subway.

“The regulations for ticket prices are in complete disorder,” Wu, the former tour guide, told NBC News in a phone interview. “Local price regulators usually say ‘yes’ to tourist attractions, no matter what they want to charge. Then the tourist-trap managers give a big discount to tour agencies, who make the money from selling very expensive tickets to tourists.”

Wu complained that little is being done to remedy the situation.

“The natural resources belong to the people. They just build a wall around it and then charge a high ticket price to the people, who don’t really have a choice. This industry’s future is worrying,” added Wu.

He’s says he’s planning to create his own tour packages to counter the notorious prices in Sanya.

Switzerland tops the list as the most desirable European destination among Chinese travelers, according to the latest survey by Ctrip.com, China’s largest online travel service provider.

The online survey, covering purpose, demand and difficulties during travel, showed that 80 percent of respondents aged between 20 and 45 wanted to travel to Switzerland, followed by France, Greece, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Seventy percent of respondents said they wanted to take trains to visit Europe, while 16 percent preferred airplanes, 7 percent buses and 5 percent rental cars.

Self-service travel came in as the most popular form of travel.

However, the main barriers keeping visitors at home included difficulties obtaining visas, high costs and a lack of local knowledge.

In recent years, European nations have focused promotions on attracting Chinese tourists opting for individual trips instead of group travel packages.

The cost of individual trip packages includes air and train tickets and hotels, and the trips can range from three to 21 days.

In just five days time the 10th Routes Asia event will take place in Chengdu, China. The event will be hosted by Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport (CDIA) at the InterContinental Hotel, Chengdu.

This year’s Routes Asia will be attended by more airlines and airports than any previous Routes Asia event which strengthens the event’s position as the only route development forum for the entire Asia region.

86 airlines, more than ever before, are currently registered to attend the event which has seen a 27% year on year rise in airlines since last year’s event in Incheon, South Korea when 67 airlines attended. This record participation for any pan-Asian route development event highlights the continuous demand for new air links across Asia and the fast-growing ties between Asian nations.

Recent airline registrations include LionAir who have recently placed a record breaking order for aircraft with Boeing signed by President Obama and Cebu Pacific Air who will shortly begin long haul flights with their A330 aircraft and will brief airports at Routes Asia on these plans in an exclusive briefing. The event will also see a strong cargo representation, more than in previous years including registrations from Air China Cargo, FedEx, Jade Cargo, Malaysia Airlines Cargo, UPS and Turkish Airlines Cargo.

Both Japan Airlines and All Nippon, two major Japanese carriers, will be in attendance along with strong presence from the Chinese and Middle Eastern airlines. Low cost carriers will also be there in full force alongside carriers from outside of the region with interest from the North American market (United Airlines, American Airlines and Air Canada) and Europe (Finnair and British Airways).

“We will have record attendance at Routes Asia in China this month,” said David Stroud, Executive Vice President Airports, Routes for UBM Aviation explaining: “There is clearly a continuing high demand for better connections between Asia’s growing cities. In addition to the big Asian airlines, Middle Eastern airlines and Asian low-cost carriers play an increasingly important role in the region. Perhaps more surprisingly, we also see an increase in airports from North America and Europe at Routes Asia as they pursue air links within the growing markets of Asia.”

“Sichuan is one of the most important economic provinces,” commented PAN Xiaojun, Chairman of Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport and General Manager of Sichuan Province Airport Group, continuing: “Chengdu city plays a leading role in China’s west economic development. Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport has a reputation as the fourth largest city of china’s aviation. The year’s passenger throughput and the cargo throughput rank the first in the mid-west airport of China, and the 46th around the world. We believe the airline companies which are full of strategic foresight would consider Chengdu as the first option to step into or expand the market of China’s aviation, and gain effective and positive achievements.”

Mr PAN Xiaojun will also give one of the keynote addresses at the Routes Asia Strategy Forum which will open the event on the afternoon of Sunday 15th April. This forum, which is open to all registered delegates, will also include a keynote address from Mr LI Haiying, Secretary of the Party Committee of Sichuan Airlines Group Co. and General Manager of Sichuan Airlines.

A panel of leading industry experts will then take part in a number of moderator led discussions which will address issues affecting aviation and route development across the Asia region. Sessions will cover Network development and market opportunity in China, Challenges and opportunities in India and Cyclical markets and dealing with traffic downs following economic and natural disasters. High level delegates involved in the panel sessions include, amongst many others, Mr LUO Yu, Vice General Manager of Chengdu Airlines, Mr Andrew Parker, Senior Vice President – Public, International, Industry Environment Affairs for Emirates, Mr Rajeev Jain, President of Mumbai International Airport Pvt Ltd, Mr. Prashant Sukul, Government of India, The Ministry of Civil Aviation for the Government of India and Mr. Andrew McEvoy, Managing Director of Tourism Australia.

This year’s Routes Asia event will also see more airport delegates in attendance than in previous years with more Chinese airports represented than ever before and many airports from outside the region attending Routes Asia in 2012. Airports attending the event for the first time this year include Adisumarmo Surakarta Airport, Ekaterinburg Koltsovo Airport, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Bordeaux Airport, Aeroports de Lyon SA, Winnipeg Airports Authority and Birmingham Airport Ltd.

The 70th anniversary reunion of the 1942 Doolittle Tokyo Raid this week also commemorates the role of the Chinese people who not only welcomed the American Raiders as heroes but helped save their lives — often at great peril.

“They were very important to us,” said David Thatcher, 90, of Missoula, Mont. “If not for them, the Japanese surely would have captured us.”

Eight Raiders were taken prisoner after the raid. Three were executed and another died in captivity. Historians have recorded that tens of thousands of Chinese people were killed by Japanese soldiers for enabling the other survivors to get away.

All the Raiders are in their 90s now, and say they believe the villagers who helped them directly are either dead or too old to travel. But a Chinese delegation coming to their Dayton, Ohio, reunion this week will include at least two children of key benefactors, as well as officials of Zhejiang Province in the southeast China region where the Raiders crash-landed or parachuted from ditched planes. A television crew will join them to do a documentary about their rescue and Chinese-U.S. friendship.

According to delegation spokeswoman Liang Yonghong, among the items they are bringing with them is the journal of the late He Yangling, a leader of the province at the time. His daughter He Shaoying, a retired professor who was then 7 years old, has translated the journal into English and plans to give it to Lt. Col. Richard Cole, lone survivor today of Doolittle’s lead plane.

His journal recounts that she asked her father who the strange people were. “They are coming from the sky,” he told her. He wrote that later, a smiling Doolittle lifted his daughter up into the air.

Also coming is Liao Mingfa, who was also 7, the son of village leader Liao Shiyuan, who helped carry injured Raiders to safety. The father hid one Raider, the late Charles Ozuk, in his home to feed and nurse him to health.

Surviving Raiders recall communicating with villagers through drawings, pointing and other sign language, sometimes not sure whether they were friendly or would turn them over to the Japanese. An account by a Chinese Air Force commander of the time, Zheng Zixiang, in Jiangxi province, reports with some amusement that the Raiders told Chinese air force members they had been found by “weird people” who smeared their wounds with muddy herbs and fed them porridge.

“These ‘weird people’ were villagers dressed in traditional Chinese clothes, who lived in remote areas, and the herbs they used were Chinese medicine,” states his account.

———

Associated Press researcher Zhao Liang in Beijing contributed.

Melbourne airport has a new Chinese sibling.

Melbourne and Chengdu as sister airports will help form a new bond between Australia and China, federal Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson says.

Mr Ferguson says Monday’s announcement is an exciting development for Australia’s tourism industry with China one of our fastest growing inbound tourism markets.

Traffic from China was up by more than 20 per cent in 2011 on the year before, with more than 542,000 tourists coming down under for a holiday.

“This new relationship between the two airports will see cooperation on route development, operations, planning and retailing,” Mr Ferguson said in a statement.

“Already China is Australia’s largest inbound market in terms of expenditure, and today’s announcement is a great step towards direct services between Melbourne and Chengdu.”

The capital of the Sichuan province in southwest China has a population of more than 15 million.

Tourism Australia predicts the Chinese market could add $9 billion to Australia’s $35 billion tourism industry by 2020.

“Eight Chinese cities now have a population more than 10 million, and 93 cities have more than 5 million,” Mr Ferguson said.

“That is 93 cities in China bigger than Sydney with a growing middle class that I know would enjoy experiencing Australia.

“Already we have China Southern, Qantas, Air China, China Eastern, Hainan and Cathay Pacific currently flying over 1.2 million seats per year between Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Australia.”

Mr Ferguson said China Southern now flew from Guangzhou to Melbourne and Brisbane, and in November last year launched the first direct flights between mainland China and Perth.