VISITBRITAIN, Britain’s official tourism agency, announced Tuesday a new collaboration with a leading China-based Internet technology and cultural enterprise in a bid to increase spending by Chinese tourists to a billion pounds a year.

The agency said the link with Tencent on a new 3-D racing game “QQ Speed” is aimed at inspiring more Chinese visitors to book a trip to Britain. It means online gamers in China can now tour Britain virtually on two new tracks, exploring “British Castles” themed around Windsor Castle and “North Sea Fishery” which is based on Britain’s seaside villages.

The main virtual character in the game “Little Mandarin” Xiao Juzi has also been appointed as a VisitBritain goodwill ambassador for the Chinese market.

Britain has seen a record number of visitors from China in the first half of 2018 with 137,000 visits, up 19 percent on the same period last year. For every 22 visits from China, one job is created in Britain’s tourism industry, added VisitBritain.

VisitBritain said: “Visitors from China are some of the UK’s highest spenders, last year spending on average 2,059 pounds (US$2,650) during their visit, more than three times the all-market average. Last year saw China enter the UK’s top 10 most valuable inbound visitor markets.”

(Xinhua)