OREANDA-NEWS. A new landmark air services agreement between the Chinese and Australian governments is a major boost to attracting more Chinese visitors.

"This agreement places Sydney and NSW in the box seat to attract more Chinese tourists," Sydney Airport managing director and chief executive officer Kerrie Mather said.

The new bilateral agreement immediately increases the current weekly seat capacity by 136 per cent, adding 4,000 seats for airlines flying from the main gateway cities of Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou and 26,500 seats a week for airlines flying from a second or third tier city.

Total capacity between Australia and China will almost triple from the current limit of 22,500 seats to 67,000 seats a week by 2016.

"We have been in discussions with a number of Chinese airlines that want to fly to Sydney, but the existing agreement has been at capacity over the peak season for a number of years," said Ms Mather, who is in China this week meeting airlines.

"Based on current growth rates, China is on track to overtake New Zealand as our largest inbound market in 2016 and this agreement will enable airlines to capitalise on this market's consistently strong growth."

The new capacity available immediately for direct flights from second and third tier cities means that Australia will be able to accommodate growing demand from these regions.

"Some of our largest unserved markets are outside of the primary hubs of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and our strategy is to attract more visitors from these cities," Ms Mather said.

"This new bilateral agreement is great news for our tourism industry and extremely timely with Chinese New Year - a peak time for travel - next month.

"We will now work closely with our partner, Destination NSW, to ensure that we can capture as many new services as possible.

"Chinese travellers are our fastest and most consistently growing market, increasing 16.4 per cent last year and accounting for half of our international passenger growth.

"We commend Deputy Prime Minister Truss and Minister Robb for the government's proactive approach to attracting more tourism from this significant market.

Currently, four mainland Chinese airlines (Air China, China Eastern, China Southern and Sichuan Airlines) fly to Sydney Airport with direct services to five mainland cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing and Nanjing).

"Over the past five years, Chinese airlines have doubled seat capacity to Sydney, with the number of weekly services rising from 48 to 82. Just this week, China Eastern announced it would be increasing its Shanghai-Sydney service from seven to 10 frequencies a week from mid-June," Ms Mather said.

"More than 100 million Chinese travel abroad each year with 760,000 travelling to Australia in 2013-14. Increasing air capacity between the two countries will ensure that Australia will be able to compete for a greater share of Chinese international travellers.

"Chinese tourists spend in the vicinity of USD 5 billion a year in Australia and this is set to grow to between USD 7.4 billion and USD 9 billion by 2020.

"We have significantly stepped up our efforts to provide services to this market, introducing Mandarin-speaking airport ambassadors, Chinese signage, guides, a Chinese version of our website and our free app and encouraging our retailers to accept Chinese credit cards as a form of payment."