Scandinavian Tourist Board held its annual Travel Trade Workshop, Friday 24 February in Beijing. The Embassy participated in order to support the attraction of Chinese tourists to Denmark and to provide information about the Danish visa procedures.
21 Danish and Norwegian businesses in the tourism field met 120 Chinese tour operators and 70 representatives from the media at these BtB-networking event in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, where Scandinavian tourism was promoted.
As usual the visa staff from the Danish missions in China were available during the networking sessions and our tables were well visited by the Chinese tour operators and many questions were answered.
The overall goal was to attract more tourists to Denmark, but the event also presented the opportunity for the Danish missions to provide factual information about the Danish visa procedures, since, unfortunately a lot of misunderstandings about the visa procedures circulate among stakeholders in the tourism industry.
Common misunderstandings, which the Danish missions encounter, are:
• The Embassy does not issue visas for individual tourists• The Embassy takes at least one month to issue a visa
None of these statements are true.
“At the Danish missions in China we encourage a dialogue between us and the travel agencies and other stakeholders, in order to avoid those misunderstandings occur,” said Consul and Head of the Visa Department, Anja Pedersen, during her key note speech.
Information about visa procedures including processing time and types of visas issued are available at the website: http://kina.um.dk/en/travel-and-residence/
Anja Pedersen's speech held at the Workshop