Record number of tourists visited US in 2010

Nearly half of the visitors came from seven countries -- Australia, Brazil, China, France, India, Italy and South Korea.

The biggest increase was among Chinese visitors, up 53 percent compared to 2009, said Dick Champley, a senior research analyst at the Department of Commerce\'s Office of Travel and Tourism Industries (OTTI).

Based on customs documents, the number of Chinese tourists entering the United States in 2010 was 810,738, Champley told AFP.

The complete figures are to be released next week.

South Korean visitors showed the second biggest increase -- around 1.1 million South Koreans visited the United States last year, up 49 percent compared to the year before, Champley said.

Brazilians flocked to the United States in record numbers of nearly 1.2 million last year, a 34 percent increase over the previous year and a 64 percent increase over 2000, when foreign visitors to the United States hit a "high-water mark," Champley said.

"After 2000, the numbers went down because of a recession in the early 2000s, the attacks of 9/11, SARS," or severe acute respiratory syndrome, he said.

"The war in Iraq also didn\'t do the numbers much good, but they started to move up again in late 2003 and kept moving higher until 2009, when they dipped again because of the global recession," said Champley.

The record number of tourist is not only an indication that the world is pulling out of recession, but that tourism is helping the US economy, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a statement.

"More visitors to the US means more people eating in our restaurants, shopping in our malls and visiting our attractions, which leads to more US jobs," said Locke -- whom President Barack Obama nominated last week to be the next US ambassador to China.

Travel and tourism is a $1.3 trillion sector of the US economy, providing jobs for 7.8 million Americans, according to the Commerce Department.

Next month, OTTI will release updated profiles of where different countries\' nationals go in the United States and how much they spend.

The 2009 visitor profiles showed that more Australians visited New York than California, that Brazilian visitors were the most likely to go to amusement parks, and that Chinese visitors were the only ones to go to casinos or other gambling places in significant numbers.

© Copyright AFP Agence France-Presse GmbH - All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or distributed. All reproduction or redistribution is expressly forbidden without the prior written agreement of AFP.