Visa requirements for Chinese visiting Tahiti to ease

Transcript

Details are expected to be released about France easing the requirements for Chinese tourists wishing to visit French Polynesia.

This comes after years of lobbying by politicians in French Polynesia, whose economy is struggling in the face of a drop in tourism.

The publisher of the Tahiti Pacifique monthly, Alex du Prel, told Walter Zweifel the process run by France has been quite cumbersome.

ALEX DU PREL: It was so difficult for Chinese to get a visa to France. They would have to personally go to a French consulate or embassy. They had to show proof and everything that they had sufficient means and bank accounts. There was a huge sum. There was an interview and the local high commissioner, he said 'No, it's much better now. Before they needed ten different documents, now they need only five'. Later on he said 'Well, I'm not the guy who decides' because a few people were laughing. And then Mr Fabius, the French foreign minister, said to Mr Flosse in a letter that yes, he would make it possible to issue visas in a two-day span. But we still don't have all the details of how many documents they still need and so on and so on.

WALTER ZWEIFEL: Do you have any idea why France had such restrictive policies towards Chinese travellers, given that they're in the world in the tens of millions nowadays?

ADP: I have no idea why we had this trick. While we had Reunion, this is another French island in the Indian Ocean, they were allowing the Chinese. When they landed they would obtain immediately, automatically a seven-day visa. And our local people just didn't understand why we had such special restrictions. I think it might be left over from the nuclear tests. Some of the public servants have realised this, that this stopped 18 years ago.

WZ: With this easing of the visa conditions, are there any expectations of a massive increase in Chinese visitors?

ADP: Actually, no because while in the States or New Zealand or America you have the old tradition of Bougainville, Captain Cook and all these books that were written. So there's a very strong myth about Tahiti in western countries because of the 'western discoverers', as they called them. While in China, it's a totally different sphere and nobody has any idea where Tahiti is or what it is whatsoever because don't forget that they had their own iron wall for so many years. Also, if they want to see beaches, coconut trees or water bungalows, they go to the Maldives or Thailand or other tropical destinations which are one-half or one-quarter the price of Tahiti.