本帖最后由 满仓 于 2014-9-18 09:11 编辑
【中文标题】中国游客在纽约
【原文标题】Some Chinese Tourists Visit New York but Sleep in New Jersey
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文作者】JAMES BARRON
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/nyregion/some-chinese-tourists-visit-new-york-but-sleep-in-new-jersey.html
在参观自由女神像之前，一些游客会参观荷兰隧道。
这一天的行程开始得很早。7:30，来自中国的56名游客就在一个酒店停车场中排队等候，他们刚在这里度过一晚。
他们急切盼望着那些第一次来美国的游客们的行程——坐船驶过自由女神像；登上帝国大厦顶层；参观大都会艺术博物馆。
但首先，他们要进入市区。
这意味着搭乘一辆闪闪发光的大巴，行驶45分钟，经过路边的广告牌和一座州立监狱，并且穿过荷兰隧道。
新泽西的一条道路上，每天都在上演这样的场景。那里为人所知的是炼油厂、沼泽和高速公路的交通堵塞，而并不是招待来自地球另一边旅客的旅馆。
但是由于赴美国的中国游客激增，新泽西已经成为了一个不大可能的住宿基地。当然也包括这个旅行团，他们刚刚在温德姆花园纽瓦克机场酒店度过一晚，这里距纽瓦克自由国际机场的一条高速公路不到四分之一英里。
导游赵大卫在今年夏天引导中国游客在市区内游览。
中国游客催生出旅店业的一种次文化，包括廉价的房间和早退房服务，以便游客们在早高峰到来之前乘车离开。一些新泽西酒店，比如温德姆花园酒店，增加了早餐品种来迎合中国游客，包括大米粥，同时也有华夫饼和枫糖浆等标准美国早餐。
据当地的旅游市场机构NYC & Company给出的数据，这个城市接待的中国游客数量从2010年到2013年增长了182％，而且纽约是位列洛杉矶之后的中国游客在美国第二大旅游目的地城市。在新泽西住宿的中国人数量不得而知，但为温德姆花园酒店安排大巴的汽车公司——这家公司在当地专门为中国游客提供服务——在当天派出16辆大巴，有600多名中国人从新泽西的几家酒店上车。乘客们到市区一日游，只在曼哈顿停留一个上午和一个下午。
行业分析人士认为，价格是一个重要因素。关注酒店业的PKF咨询公司高级副总裁Mark VanStekelenberg说，诺瓦克机场附近的酒店平均价格为116美元一晚，曼哈顿酒店平均价格为294美元一晚。但旅行社可以得到更低的折扣。
结果是很多新泽西的酒店客满为患，即使他们提供的服务远比不上华道夫阿斯多里亚酒店。一家酒店业咨询公司Lodging Advisors的高管Sean Hennessey说：“纽约人和新泽西人认为，诺瓦克和纽约是两个不同的地方，这个地区之外全是纽约。”
一家咨询公司PwC的总监Warren Marr说，在经济危机结束以及曼哈顿的商业活动恢复活跃之后，新泽西的经济颇有受益。“要了解曼哈顿的商业需求有多么强劲，酒店价格有多么坚挺，你只需要看看隧道中的车流和诺瓦克机场附近酒店的入住率就知道了。”
新泽西并非只有中国游客，来自其它国家的旅行社每年在这里预定数千个房间，尤其是直飞诺瓦克机场的旅行团。但是中国中产阶级的膨胀，加上签证政策的放松，让一大批中国人有机会到国外旅游度假。但是，Hennessey先生说，中国游客“与其它很多国家的游客相比较，依然对成本极为敏感。”
意料之中的事情是，纽约旅游局的官员们在绞尽脑汁把游客吸引到哈德孙河另一边的酒店里。
NYC & Company在上海给中国旅行社建立了一个所谓的培训学院，这些人普遍希望打开纽约的旅游市场。纽约州政府今年在中国开设了一个旅游办公室，州旅游官员7月份在纽约上城区召开了一个“让中国准备好”的研讨会，培训旅行社和地方政府如何向中国人兜售自己的旅游市场。
中国最大的航空客运公司中国南方航空公司，最近增加了一个航班目的地——约翰肯尼迪国际机场。南航计划每周从它位于广州的集散地始发4趟航班。（中国目前已经有24趟航班直飞肯尼迪机场，有14趟航班直飞诺瓦克机场。）
一辆大巴停在温德姆花园酒店。
对于依赖旅游市场的产业，比如酒店业来说，这样的呼吁是积极的。据商务部提供的数字，去年平均每位中国游客的消费金额是7427美元，比2012年增长了941美元。不仅如此，中国人旅游市场呈现出急速增长的势头，有人预测到美国旅游的中国游客数量每年会增长35％。
专为中国游客安排行程的导游说，中国游客的住宿地主要几种在两个地方——诺瓦克机场附近的新泽西，和新泽西高速公路通往北不伦瑞克和艾迪逊出口附近。他们希望预定整团行程，在华盛顿和费城等地一日游，第二天前往曼哈顿。
温德姆酒店的总经理Don Sheneman说，中国游客提供了“是一个稳定的客源”，缓解了本地旅游市场季节性游客不均的现象，中国游客占入住率的25％到30％。酒店所有人之一Steven Wu说，中国游客让酒店的入住率高达85％到90％。
为了容纳更多的客人，酒店最近把349间客房中的50间改装成所谓的“双双人间”。也就是把每个房间里摆上两张大床，最多可以容纳4个人。
即使如此，负责酒店预定的导游Michael Tchong说，新泽西有时依然无法满足中国游客的预定需求。“房间总共就是这么多了。”
Tchong先生说，当中国游客被告知在距离纽约市30分钟的新泽西落脚时，有的人会抱怨：“我们更希望住在车程15分钟以内的地方。”于是我们就把他们安排到锡考克斯。（锡考克斯距离市中心大约6英里。）
Hennessey先生还列举了新泽西酒店的另外一个优势：旅游大巴可以在途中返回酒店。他说：“如果你住在市区，停车是个大问题。但是在新泽西，大巴可以随意停放。”
在温德姆花园酒店大巴上做导游的赵大卫说，观光在纽约，住宿在新泽西，让一些中国人很难理解。“在中国，酒店一般都位于市区内，这里却完全相反。中国市区内的酒店价格在一般人承受范围之内。”
似乎是为了让情况变得更加复杂，赵先生的大巴上的一些中国人比原计划早到了一两天，他们就住在市区内的酒店。32岁的夏雨燕和她的父亲，74岁的夏新华说，贝斯特韦斯特酒店让他的父亲“首先适应了美国”。
夏先生来自中国东部城市梧州。夏女士来自肯塔基州凡尔赛，她曾经在那里任教一年半。她说，如果赵先生不提起，她都没有意识到自己不是在纽约。她说：“纽约和新泽西有什么区别？我知道这是两个州，不过有什么区别？”
原文：
Before they visit the Statue of Liberty, some visitors see the Holland Tunnel.
The day began early. By 7:30 a.m., the 56 tourists from China were standing in line in the parking lot of the hotel in which they had spent the night.
They were eager to do the things first-time tourists do — sail past the Statue of Liberty, stand atop the Empire State Building and stroll through the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
But first they had to get to the city.
That meant climbing aboard a shiny tour bus and settling in for a 45-minute ride past roadside billboards and a state prison and through the Holland Tunnel.
It is a scene that is repeated many times each morning in a stretch of New Jersey better known for oil refineries, swamps and traffic-choked highways than for providing beds for tourists from halfway around the world.
But with the number of Chinese tourists to New York soaring, New Jersey has become an unlikely base camp for many of them, including this group, which had spent the night at the Wyndham Garden Newark Airport, a scant quarter-mile from one of the runways at Newark Liberty International Airport.
David Zhao, a tour guide, escorting Chinese sightseers through the city this summer.
Chinese sightseers are fueling a subculture of hotels that have cheap rooms and early-morning checkouts to give tour buses a chance to beat the traffic. Some New Jersey hotels, like the Wyndham Garden, have expanded their breakfast buffets to appeal to Chinese guests, serving such Chinese favorites as the rice porridge congee alongside American standards like waffles with maple syrup.
The number of Chinese visitors to the city jumped 182 percent from 2010 to 2013, according to NYC & Company, the city’s tourism marketing agency, and New York ranks second as a destination for Chinese travelers in the United States, after Los Angeles. How many Chinese stay in New Jersey is difficult to determine, but the tour company that sent the bus to the Wyndham Garden — one of many tour operators in the city that specialize in tours for Chinese people — dispatched 16 buses that picked up more than 600 Chinese tourists from several New Jersey hotels that day. The passengers ventured into the city as day-trippers, spending only a morning and an afternoon in Manhattan.
Price is the big factor, industry analysts say. The average hotel room around the Newark airport was $116 a night last year, according to Mark VanStekelenberg, a senior vice president of PKF Consulting USA, which follows the hotel industry. The average in Manhattan was $294 a night, he said. But tour companies command discounts that can drive the cost lower.
The result is that many New Jersey hotels are filling rooms, even if they do not offer the same amenities as the Waldorf-Astoria. “People in New York and New Jersey think of Newark and New York as two different places,” said Sean Hennessey, the chief executive of Lodging Advisors, a hotel industry consulting company. “Outside this area, it’s all New York.”
New Jersey had benefited as the economy strengthened with the end of the recession and business travel to Manhattan rebounded, said Warren Marr, a managing director of the consulting firm PwC. “When you get to where demand in Manhattan is really strong and rates in the hotels go up, you get this swoosh through the tunnels, and the hotels near Newark Airport fill in.”
Chinese travelers are hardly alone in New Jersey — tourists and tour operators from other countries book thousands of rooms a year there, especially for groups that fly into Newark. But a surging middle class in China and relaxed visa restrictions have opened leisure travel abroad to a much larger share of the population. Still, Mr. Hennessey said, tourism from China “remains significantly more cost-conscious than tourism from a lot of other countries.”
New York tourism officials, not surprisingly, are striving to draw visitors to hotels on the other side of the Hudson.
NYC & Company has set up what it calls a training academy in Shanghai for Chinese travel agents who dream of breaking into the New York market. New York State opened a tourism office in China this year, and state tourism officials presented workshops, “Becoming China Ready,” in upstate New York in July to teach travel agents and local governments how to promote themselves to the Chinese market.
China Southern Airlines, the country’s largest passenger carrier, recently added another destination: John F. Kennedy International Airport. China Southern is scheduling four flights a week from its hub in Guangzhou, in southeastern China. (There are already more than 24 flights a week from China at Kennedy and 14 at Newark Liberty.)
A bus at the Wyndham Garden Newark Airport hotel.
For tourism-dependent businesses like hotels, the appeal is straightforward. The average spending by travelers from China totaled about $7,427 a person last year, $941 more than in 2012, according to the Commerce Department. More than that, though, the Chinese market promises significant growth. Some projections put the increase in Chinese travelers to the United States at 35 percent a year.
Tour operators who specialize in bookings for Chinese say there are two main areas where Chinese tour operators look for hotel rooms in New Jersey, one around the Newark airport, the other along the New Jersey Turnpike around the exits for North Brunswick and Edison. They appeal to tour wholesalers booking groups that have spent a day in places like Washington or Philadelphia and plan to spend the next day in Manhattan.
For the Wyndham Garden, Chinese tourists provide “a steady flow of regular business” that cushions the ups and downs of the domestic market, said Don Sheneman, the general manager. Chinese guests, he said, represent 25 to 30 percent of check-ins, and one of the owners, Steven Wu, said the Chinese had pushed the hotel’s occupancy rate as high as 85 or 90 percent.
To accommodate more guests, the hotel recently converted 50 of its 349 rooms to what are called double doubles. The hotel took one king bed out of each of those rooms and installed two double beds, so that more travelers could double up.
Even so, Michael Tchong, a tour operator who often books groups at the hotel, said New Jersey did not always have enough rooms to handle reservations for Chinese guests. “That’s how many there are,” he said.
Mr. Tchong said that when Chinese visitors were told they would be staying in New Jersey, 30 minutes from New York City, some complained. “They say, ‘We’d rather be 15 minutes away, not 30,’ ” he said. “We put them in Secaucus.” (Secaucus is about six miles from the city.)
Mr. Hennessey cited another advantage of hotels in New Jersey: Tour buses can return to the hotel during the day. “When you stay in the city, you have to worry about where you park the bus,” he said, while in New Jersey, “the bus can park over there.”
David Zhao, the tour guide on the bus from the Wyndham Garden, said the concept of staying in New Jersey on a trip to New York was hard for some Chinese to understand. “In China, hotels are usually all inside the city limits,” he said. “It’s just the opposite of the situation here.” He added, “In Chinese cities there are always hotels that are affordable.”
As if to compound the confusion, some of the Chinese on Mr. Zhao’s bus had arrived a day or two earlier and had stayed in hotels in the city. Xia Yuyan, 32, and her father, Xia Xinhua, 74, said a Best Western hotel in Flushing, Queens, had let her father “acclimate to the United States first.”
He had arrived from Wuzhou, in eastern China. Ms. Xia had traveled from Versailles, Ky., where she has taught for a year and a half. She said she would not have known that she was not in New York if Mr. Zhao, the tour guide, had not mentioned it. “What’s the difference between New York and New Jersey?” she asked. “I know they’re in two different states, but what’s the difference?”
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发表于 2014-9-18 09:11
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