Argentina and Brazil Plan to Introduce Single Joint Visa for Chinese Tourists

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Argentina and Brazil will announce, in Macau, the mutual acceptance of visas issued by the two countries to Chinese tourists, and will exempt Chinese who have visas for the United States or Europe from the visa requirement.

At the Global Tourism Economy Forum (GTEF), held from October 13th to 15th in Macau, Argentina and Brazil, the organization’s honorary guests, will work together to attract tourism investments and Chinese tourists.

Among the goals is the attraction of part of the 149 million tourists that China currently sends out to the world. To this end, Brazil and Argentina will announce two measures to be introduced in the coming months.

Chinese tourists who apply for a visa to visit Argentina will automatically have their entry into Brazil approved, and vice-versa: the so-called reciprocal visas.

In addition, Chinese tourists who already have a visa for the United States or for the Schengen area of Europe will automatically be entitled to enter Brazil and Argentina without the need for another visa.

“The enactment of these initiatives is not yet finalized, but we will build this with the Congress and with diplomacy. It may be finished before the end of the year,” Gilson Machado Neto, president of the Brazilian Tourism Institute (Embratur), told Lusa.

Currently, only 60,000 Chinese travel to Brazil, a number that the authorities expect to increase rapidly.

“It is estimated that China will send 500 million tourists to the world by 2030. China will open a tourism office in São Paulo in November. So, I would say that being unoptimistic, we can double the annual amount of Chinese tourists to Brazil”, estimates Machado Neto.

Argentina experienced growth with two minor initiatives two years ago. It began to grant a 10-year visa to Chinese tourists and electronic travel authorization to Chinese tourists who had visited the United States or the Schengen area.

In 2018, the entry of Chinese tourists increased by 20 percent over the previous year, reaching 72 thousand tourists. In the first eight months of 2019, 50,000 Chinese visited Argentina, eight percent more than in the same period in 2018.

Argentina and Brazil drew up joint strategies to promote themselves as partner destinations and to attract investments in the tourism sector during the GTEF in Macau, where the sector’s global leaders will be present. The Forum is a platform in which officials have direct contact with investors.

“Because South America is so far away from China, they do not travel only to Argentina or only to Brazil. They combine both destinations. Thus the two countries’ joint action in the Global Tourism Economy Forum, so that the increase is much greater,” explains Gilson Machado Neto, of Embratur.

The distance of 19,000 km from China to Brazil or Argentina is a challenge.

Another is to add new airlines to the route. The only company that flies to South America is Air China, with a stop in Madrid, reaching São Paulo, Brazil. Argentina’s Minister of Tourism, Gustavo Santos, has a plan to make TAP airline link China with Argentina, via Lisbon.

“We are going to Macau together with Brazil. Argentine Minister Gustavo Santos told Lusa that “we have an agenda to deal with the reciprocal acceptance of visas and investments to expand tourism to both countries”.

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