Ireland is now an approved destination for Chinese tour groups. That means lots of rich visitors are beginning to arrive from Beijing, Shanghai and other cities. Clifford Coonan reports on the opportunities ahead - and some of the possible stumbling blocks
Shopkeepers, hoteliers and plain people of Ireland be warned: it's time to brush up on your Mandarin. Tourists from the world's most populous nation are coming to Ireland, in search of Riverdance, Aran jumpers, Chanel, Hermès, thoroughbred horses and wild swans, although they find we still have work to do when it comes to rustling up a decent kung-po chicken.
The Chinese have traditionally come to Ireland to work and to learn English, but economic growth and relaxed visa laws have allowed an influx of tour groups, made up of both high rollers and the more modestly wealthy, from Shanghai, Beijing and other big cities. They are keen to broaden their minds, enjoy the unpolluted countryside and spend more than a few bob on Grafton Street.
"I hear that Ireland is a very green country, and I'm really looking forward to being a tourist there," says Ping Heng, a retired engineer who is part of a tour group checking in at Beijing airport, waving Irish and Chinese flags and generally getting into the swing of things.
The Chinese government has given Ireland the status of "approved destination", which is how Ping got his visa.
"And I want to go shopping. I've got €1,000 with me to spend. This could be a big market for you. If everyone in China who wants to visit Ireland is allowed to go, then you'll have thousands going there."
Tourism Ireland clearly agrees. Last year about 5,000 Chinese visited Ireland. Susan Li, the agency's chief representative in China, is targeting 50,000 by the end of the decade. "It's changing in China," she says. "People want to travel, and many who've been to Ireland are surprised; they say it's the most beautiful country they've been in. We don't have Buckingham Palace or the Eiffel Tower, but people really enjoy the trip."
China's economic muscle means its new rich are among the most coveted travellers. They are the world's second-highest-spending tourists, after the Japanese and ahead of the Americans. The World Trade Organisation expects a whopping 100 million Chinese to travel abroad every year by the end of the decade.
At the top of the market are lifestyle tourists: rich, big-spending Chinese who are in Ireland for country houses, racehorses, wine-tasting and shopping. John Colclough is a director of Adams & Butler, a Dublin-based luxury-travel firm with very rich customers. So far it has had six small groups of Chinese spending "frightening" amounts of money.
"At present the Chinese make up a small part of our business, but it's very fast-growing, and we are very keen to encourage it," he says. "They like what we've got to offer, and we like them very much. The Chinese are brilliant as clients - a million times better than some. They have even better manners than the Americans and show extraordinary consideration for the providers of services."
Their twin passions are golf and designer labels - ideally simultaneously, which means the Old Course at Ballybunion or the Smurfit Course at the K Club. They also make a beeline for boutiques. "The ladies do like to have shopping advisers. They know the price in Hong Kong of a Hermès head scarf and are very pleased when they get a good price. Two wives and their shopping adviser recently rushed into Brown Thomas, and when they came out they knew exactly how much they had saved, down to the last dollar. There is enormous money, but it's all spent sensibly, with great care. Possibly this is the case with rich people the world over," says Colclough.
Although the tourists who have been here tend to like the country, Ireland does not come up on Chinese radar much - our entire population is smaller than that of the Chaoyang district of Beijing. Visits by the Taoiseach and the President got huge coverage, but many people will still ask where Ireland is, and those who already know need to be reminded of why they should visit.
"There is still more interest in London, Paris and New York than in Dublin, probably because no one has heard of Dublin. It ties in with their passion for labels. They want Gucci and Armani - and, like that, London and Paris are labels. We find they don't want the hideaway retreats; they want the Four Seasons," says Colclough.
Wooing the Chinese is a marketing challenge. Susan Li has knocked on doors all over China in her bid to sell Ireland as a holiday destination. "More and more people in China have heard about Ireland, but still not enough. So it's about building awareness, talking about golfing, high-end castle holidays. This year is a lucky year, and 10 million couples will get married in China - if only a fraction come to Ireland - so we tell them about the Beckhams getting married here," she says.
Sitting in a Starbucks in Beijing, Li is snowed under with bags filled with Ryder Cup baseball caps, maps and glossy brochures in Chinese, getting ready for a tourism promotion at a Beijing golf course, which will be launched by the Irish Ambassador to China, Declan Kelleher. The hard work is starting to pay off. China's state broadcaster, CCTV, which claims a billion viewers, has a popular travel programme that has covered 120 countries but never Ireland - until now. A team recently came back from filming in Ireland for two weeks. Combine this kind of penetration with coverage from some of China's top newspapers and magazines, plus dozens of wildly influential travel agents who have been to Ireland, and you can expect interest to rise sharply.
Music and literature are big draws. Clutching her hand luggage at Beijing airport before her maiden voyage to Ireland, Mu Ying, a 19-year-old university student, is keen to hear bodhráns and fiddles. You will find people here who still remember the Chieftains playing on the Great Wall in 1983, as they were one of the first western groups to tour China - big news in the days when it was still tough for foreigners to get in.
"A lot of people in China know Irish music - traditional music as well as U2. James Joyce is not so famous here, but Irish dancing is very well known." Ah, Riverdance. Before "I'm from Ireland" finishes passing your lips in China, people rave about the dance extravaganza. It can feel as if most of China's 1.3 billion people have seen the fevered jigs and reels at some stage.
A lot of Chinese travellers arrive in Ireland with business visas, have their meetings, then stay on for a couple of days to play golf. It's a long way to travel, after all, so they might as well bash a few balls around. Adams & Butler works closely with Slí Siar, a consultancy in Beijing set up by Chris Horn, the founder of Iona Technologies, and Nicole Bernard, a former head of Iona's China operation; she now runs the business.
"We're a consultancy that helps as the wealth develops; we help people make lifestyle choices about lifestyle decisions, and we do that through Ireland," says Bernard.
During the trips to Ireland that Slí Siar has organised for wealthy Chinese, they play golf, visit stud farms, learn about art and antiques and visit castles. And spend money: one group last year spent up to €50,000 on art and antiques. The trips tend to last for seven to 10 days.
"Typically, these are wealthy and successful people: entrepreneurs, CEOs and professionals. Some are very focused and just want to play golf for a week; others want more variety - visits with the lord of the castle or to stud farms - while some are interested in art and antiques," she says.
"It's going to grow, because people's criteria for judging their quality of life in China are changing very rapidly; they're becoming less focused on material goods and more focused on culture. If you look at the Chinese, lifestyle is everywhere. It's evolving very rapidly . . . The goal is not just to get people to go to Ireland. These are successful people, and so there are opportunities for Ireland and China. We keep a close relationship with them when they come back."
Some of the visits have highlighted cultural differences. "The guests have a passion for animals, wild and domesticated," says Colclough. "All the groups we've had have enjoyed the ability to get close to see swans on the River Lee or on the canal in Dublin. Anywhere you see animals it's a guaranteed 30 minutes' stop. Newgrange, yawn, but swans, yes please."
He adds: "You can have guests hopping into a field. We had one very glamorous woman, a TV presenter, who knocked a Kerry shepherd sideways when she asked: 'May I hug a sheep?' " There have been other issues, too. Some visitors are angry when they see Chinese artefacts in the Chester Beatty Library, in Dublin; they ask why they are not in China. The violence on the streets of Dublin in March received huge publicity in China. Many people cancelled their Irish holiday plans as a result. Last year's bombings in London also reduced the number of Chinese tourists in Ireland.
But probably the biggest challenge has been culinary. Chinese people are obsessed with food - a common greeting is "Have you eaten?" - so a concern for Chinese leaving their country has been whether they will be able to find twice-cooked pork, sliced cold chicken and fish- flavoured aubergine on Irish tables - just as anxious Irish tourists worried in the 1960s about Spain's lack of sausage and chips.
"People want Chinese food. One or two European meals is okay - they like Irish stew and salmon - but they do like Chinese food: spicy hot bean curd and hotpot," says Li.
Occasionally, this turns into outright rebellion. One group travelling in Co Kerry, tired of spuds, stopped at a Chinese takeaway en route to the castle where they were staying that night.
"In another hotel the visitors said they had to have oriental food," says Colclough. "The chef said: 'I don't do oriental. I can offer good French or bad oriental.' The guests opted for bad oriental. The pot washer in the kitchen turned out to be a Korean with the ability to produce really good food - to the delight of the guests and, no doubt, to the rage of the chef."
But people are learning. One tour operator has sent Chinese staff to test Chinese restaurants in Dublin, Cork, Co Clare and Co Kerry. Restaurateurs are showing flexibility, too. "Dinner in Patrick Guilbaud's was very good," says Colclough. "We were a bit worried, because French food is all cream and butter, but they insisted that oriental clients were not a problem - and produced a menu to suit, which was brilliant. Everyone loved it."
Another establishment has a Chinese chef on hand to produce sumptuous banquets, served on 18th-century Chinese porcelain.
But getting good Chinese food in Ireland can be pricey, particularly compared with other parts of Europe. One group of tourists would have paid €16 each for mapo dofu, or spicy bean curd, and chilli chicken - extremely cheap food at home - had strenuous efforts not brought the cost down to €11 each. They could have paid €6 or €7 each in, for example, Switzerland.
With its cost of living and its high airport taxes, plus the strength of the euro, Ireland is also expensive compared with Britain. This is a particularly painful comparison, as most Chinese tourists who come to Ireland do so as part of a package that includes a stay in Britain. Again, the tourism authorities have worked to get costs down, and an eight-night stay in Ireland now works out at €1,880 per person - still more than the €1,600 that people pay for Britain but with two extra nights. And don't forget Riverdance.
Ireland and Britain were the final EU countries to agree their approved-destination status with China. Now they have to catch up with European rivals who have been marketing their attractions for longer.
One expected growth area is secondary students coming to Ireland to learn English. This could be an enormous market, with the potential to dwarf the number of visits by Spanish and Italian teenagers. The first group of 20 students from Shanghai, who are aged between 16 and 18, is due shortly.
This could be very good for the future. Li Huaifa, manager of Shanghai China Travel International, is a case in point. He studied for a year at University College Dublin. "For many Chinese, Ireland and England seemed too far away. They don't know these countries too much, and they want to see for themselves. I think that Ireland will become a feature in the travel itinerary in China."
For 73-year-old Li Zhensong and 66-year-old Pan Zhenjia, a retired couple, travelling to Ireland and Britain is the realisation of a long-held ambition. "My father went to Britain and Ireland many years ago, in the late years of the Qing dynasty [ which ended in 1911], to study," says Li Zhensong. His wife explains that his parents told them they had to visit Ireland at some stage. "We Chinese people always want to do what our parents ask us, so this is a dream come true."
Waving off a group at Pudong airport, in Shanghai, Chris Humphrey, Virgin Atlantic's general manager in China, says the tourism market is set to take off. "People in China who can travel want to travel anywhere they can - they want to collect the stamps in their passport," he says.
The Chinese government is pretty sure these tourists won't try to stay in the West, as it vets everyone who applies to travel to an approved destination. Some travellers have absconded, but not, so far, in Ireland.
The next step will be to allow tourists to travel alone, whether they are young backpackers, honeymooners or the simply curious.
"For the first two years it's not about the numbers. We want good feedback, people saying it's worth going. Long-term we want much bigger numbers," says Li.
Once the menu has decent noodles and good Sichuan beef alongside the lamb stew.
The Chinese visa story
•Apart from the visa requirements that western countries impose on them, the Chinese can travel only to countries their government approves of.
•Ireland was granted approved-destination status (ADS) in September 2004, after an agreement was signed by the Taoiseach and Premier Wen Jiabao in May of that year. It allowed China's people to visit in tour groups, with licensed Chinese travel agencies, rather than just for study or business.
•The first countries on the ADS list were Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Macao, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. By the end of 2004 all EU countries had joined. The list now also includes other countries in Europe, Africa, Latin America, South Asia and the Pacific.
•Ireland and Britain were the final EU members to sign ADS agreements because they lie outside the Schengen zone of border-free travel.
•The ADS scheme has been highly successful in other European countries. The Swiss are processing 8,000 applications for ADS visas a month; the French say they are dealing with hundreds a day.
•Residents of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province who wish to travel abroad face fewer formalities than people from other parts of China, as the three areas are more affluent than average and their residents are considered less likely to seek tourist visas in order to emigrate.
•Germany has relaxed its rules to allow individual Chinese travellers to enter the country. As Germany is part of the Schengen zone, and people can move between Schengen states without passports, individual Chinese tourists can theoretically travel through much of mainland Europe.