China visa issues

The travel industry is often faced with testing times with travel plans being disrupted for many reasons.
The most common reason is weather conditions which is something we can’t do anything about and as safety is priority we will assist to make the necessary changes to ensure a trouble free holiday.
Last week we were faced with a new challenge when it was reported that Chinese officials were refusing entry to British Citizens on arrival . We offer many package holidays that combine China with a cruise and we had many passengers travelling to China not knowing if they would be allowed entry.
It seems that those with a visa in their passport were allowed entry but those that were using the 144 hour transit pass were being turned away randomly.
We are still not sure of the reasons for allowing some and not others but it may be to do with previous travel stamps in their passports.
Cruise.co.uk looked after our customers as best we could by arranging for a tour guide from China to meet our customers on arrival and try and assist as best they could , even those not travelling with this specific tour company. Luckily we have contacts willing to support us when necessary. We also had our own staff here in the UK making contact with passengers who were affected by assisting with alternative arrangements. We also helped customers booked with our competitors that were not getting any support from their travel firms

This is a worrying situation because visa advise states that the transit visa is ok up to 144 hours so for the authorities to suddenly turn people away without warning is unbelievable.

The best advice I can give is for anyone travelling to China to purchase a visa in advance either by contacting the embassy direct or through a visa expert such as CIBT Visas, it isn’t worth the risk