Kurt Janson: Britain is pricing itself out of an essential tourism market

It's one of the best and fastest ways of generating the jobs we need so badly in this country. And it's absolutely crucial to us to make the most of the Olympics and a whole decade of great international sport across Britain.

And indeed, he's right. Tourism is ideally suited to this purpose. It provides a very high return on investment, with Tourism Alliance calculations using official data showing it only takes 15 to attract a new visitor to the UK through overseas marketing, while every 100 new visitors that come to the UK spend 55,000 here. This level of expenditure is sufficient to generate one new full-time job in the UK and provide the Exchequer with more than 9,000 in travel tax and VAT payments. That's an exceptional return on investment. Domestic tourism promotion provides a similar return as it helps retain tourism expenditure within the UK.

The second key attribute of tourism is that it is able to provide a rapid return on the investment. The average booking period for travel to or within the UK is less than three months. This shows how swiftly the funds spent on promotional activity are translated into revenue and employment. There is also the additional benefit that tourism is pretty evenly spread throughout the UK with almost all regions having well over 100,000 people employed in the sector. However, to gain the benefits, it helps to have joined-up government in which all departments have policies that support sectors with the potential to deliver growth.

In Mr Cameron's speech, he highlighted the Chinese market as one that holds particular promise for the UK tourism industry. Currently, the UK is the 22nd most popular destination for Chinese with a share of just 0.5 per cent of the Chinese outbound market. If this could be increased to just 2.5 per cent of their outbound market this could add more than 500m to our economy and create about 10,000 new jobs.

Achieving this should not be difficult. Germany is the 10th most popular destination for Chinese tourists and yet it has none of the historic connections, the attractions nor the air links that the UK has with China. However, it does have something that the UK can't provide – a Schengen visa.

If you are a Chinese visitor and want to travel to Europe, you apply for a Schengen visa which costs about 60. This visa allows you to travel around 25 countries in continental Europe. And, as most Chinese tourists to Europe undertake multi-country package holidays on buses, a Schengen visa provides pretty good value for money.

Unfortunately, if you want to include the UK on your European itinerary, you also need to apply for a separate UK visa at a cost of 67. And in addition to that, because you are now flying in and out of the UK, you also have to pay Air Passenger Duty, which you don't pay if you fly to any other European country. Come November 1, this will add another 75 to the cost of your trip (or 150 if you travel in premium economy or above). So a family of four from China has to pay an additional 568 in tax and charges just to add the UK to their itinerary.

The problem doesn't stop there. To get a UK visa, everyone in the family needs to travel to the UK visa centre in China to provide proof they are genuine tourists and to have their biometric data taken. This means taking time off work, taking children out of school and travelling what can be hundreds of miles to a visa centre.

At the visa centre you have to fill in the application forms in English (there is no option to complete a form in Mandarin). And even if you have already been granted a Schengen visa for the European component of your journey, there is no guarantee that you will be granted a UK visa.

With this much of a disincentive to travel to the UK, you can understand why most Chinese visitors are excluding the UK from their travel plans – and why tour operators in China are increasingly removing the UK from their European holiday brochures.

So it's so depressing to learn that that the UK Border Agency is proposing to introduce regulations into Parliament on October 1 that will increase the cost of a visa to come to the UK to 70.

Incidentally, the proposed charges will also increase the cost of visas to study in the UK from 199 to 220 just at a time that Government funding for universities is being cut and the fees paid by overseas students are most needed to cross-subsidise the fees of UK students.

What is needed is for the Government to take a more holistic view of the benefits that can be derived from overseas tourism rather than seeing them as simply being a cost on Border Agency resources.

Foreign people should be encouraged to visit us – with applications in the language of the source country, sharing of biometric data and data collection facilities with other European countries and the development of a low-cost UK visa that bolts-on to a Schengen visa.

All these would have no adverse impact on UK security but would position us as a welcoming destination to visit and spend money.

Kurt Janson is policy director of the Tourism Alliance.