Nevada delegation tries to ease fears on visa process

Thursday, June 16, 2005 | 11:06 a.m.

BEIJING -- When it comes to visits by Chinese tourists to Las Vegas, the visa application process has always been the Great Wall that keeps people from coming in greater numbers.

A delegation of Nevada tourism professionals today launched a fresh attempt to knock down the biggest barrier to bringing thousands of new Chinese visitors to the state.

At a sales presentation organized by the year-old Nevada Commission on Tourism China Office, Paul Kreutzer, second secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, told about 100 Chinese travel agents that the process for obtaining a visa to enter the United States isn't as daunting as they may have been led to believe.

"Las Vegas and Nevada are places built on fantasies," Kreutzer said. "But there have been an equal number of fantasies and misunderstandings about the visa process."

Kreutzer said 108,000 visas were issued to Chinese tourists in 2004 and more than 200,000 were granted by four American consulates in mainland China. Requests to travel to the United States on general and student visas are on the rise, he added.

In order to obtain a visa to travel to the United States, a Chinese citizen must schedule an interview at the U.S. Consulate well in advance of travel. The appointment wait time currently is four to five weeks.

The interview itself may take as little as five minutes, but the process includes a background check, financial verification and capturing the applicant's fingerprints digitally, which in total could take two to three hours.

Kreutzer said visa laws are written to discourage emigration to the United States and visa applicants must prove their commitment to return to China by showing family ties and an employment record. As a result, singles and students often have a harder time getting permission to travel to the United States, some of the Chinese travel agents at the Nevada meeting said.

Kreutzer also said some applicants have been advised to bring a letter of introduction to the visa interview and a number of phony letters have surfaced. During his presentation, he showed one that was purported to have come from MGM Mirage.

Kreutzer said there is no fixed rate of acceptance or quota system in place on the number of visas that would be approved.

"We can approve all, some or none of all that apply," he said.

Bruce Bommarito, executive director of the Nevada Commission on Tourism, said misunderstandings about the visa process continue to be the top roadblock to generating more tourism from China.

"The biggest challenge we have is convincing people that it isn't as hard as it used to be," Bommarito said., "After all the years it has been that way, it's hard to change the mindset."

Despite the challenge, Bommarito and his staff organized a three-hour familiarization presentation highlighting the Nevada tourism experience without talking about gambling -- a limitation set by the Chinese government when it licensed the state to have an office in Beijing.

Bommarito's Nevada education seminar was at the Grand Hyatt Hotel Beijing in the center of the city a few blocks from the Forbidden City, one of China's top tourism draws.

"We could have made calls to our top clients, but with Beijing traffic what it is, we could have gotten in maybe three or four a day. It made more sense to have it in this format."

The Nevada presentation included a series of drawings, an appearance by showgirl Ruta Maria Jasiukaitis and a series of videos showing the state's entertainment, dining, shopping and adventure experiences.

The Nevada presentation included talks on Las Vegas and Reno by Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority representatives and by the Nevada Wedding Association and Papillon Helicopters, which paid their own way to appear on the program.

The event also included a presentation by South Korea-based Asiana Airlines, one of the commercial passenger carriers being courted to develop nonstop air service between mainland China and Las Vegas.

Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt, who chairs the Nevada Commission on Tourism, is scheduled to meet Friday with representatives of three airlines that have aircraft capable of flying the lengthy route. Japan Airlines currently is the only passenger carrier offering nonstop service from Asia to Las Vegas with flights from Tokyo. That route was developed through a series of meetings coordinated by former Gov. Bob Miller.

Asiana, through its Star Alliance code-share agreement with several other airlines, has shown an interest in the Nevada market, as have U.s.-based Northwest Airlines and United Airlines.

Establishing nonstop flights between Las Vegas and China is a top priority for Hunt, especially since new competition is entering the picture.

Bommarito said Hawaii sent a delegation to Beijing earlier this month and that state is on the verge of establishing the second U.S. state office in Beijing.