ATI's Hentschel Tells Canadian Auto Club to 'Bring China to Canada' and Back Schwarzenegger's 'Green' Campaign.

OTTAWA -- Noel Irwin Hentschel, CEO of Los Angeles-based AmericanTours International (ATI), spoke Tuesday morning (19) at the opening of the Canadian Automobile Association's (CAA) Annual General Meeting at the Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa.

Announcing the recent signing of ATI's agreement with China's official airlines Air China to promote reciprocal travel between China and North America, Hentschel's focus was on the China market. "China is now in the top three destinations in the world for travelers and ATI is in a unique position in that we provide inbound to the US and Canada for Chinese visitors and outbound to China for CAA and AAA members as their preferred providers," she stated.

Hentschel revealed that she is working closely with the US Dept of Commerce, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the China National Travel Administration to secure promotional ads for the US and Canada. The tour operator also said that she is working with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to secure more trade and tourism between China and California and that she recently took China's Vice Minister of Commerce Madam Xiuhong Ma and a delegation of high ranking officials from Beijing to meet with the Governor in his Sacramento office. "We continue to work with the governor on the China market," she said. "And I've been commuting regularly to Beijing where I've established a residence and office to expedite the process and strengthen government commercial ties with China."

Commenting on the Governor's recent trade mission to Canada where he shared his vision and plans for California to be a model "green" economy, Hentschel expressed support for the program and indicated that she has been working with the Governor's team to increase tourism/trade activity between Canada and California to "maximize the double meaning of 'green' as in the color of money and nature, while working together to help our respective environments and economies."

Urging the tourism industry of the US and Canada to take the lead in "being green," Hentschel maintained that an important key to helping the environment is for travelers as much as possible to tour via motorcoach, a specialty of ATI since its inception 30 years ago. "It's a friendly way to travel and you can move 40 to 50 people using a much smaller carbon footprint, an improvement over using cars for that many people," she said. "At ATI, we also bought carbon credits to help offset reduced carbon emission."

Hentschel added that ATI plans to feature "green tours" in the US and Canada and will be promoting them online to CAA and AAA's travel agents and their 50 million club members.

A tourism advisor to the US Department of Commerce, Hentschel is Vice Chair of the US Travel & Tourism Board. Her ATI is the largest inbound tour operator in North America and serves more than one-million visitors from 70 countries generating $3 billion into the US economy annually. The company is based in Los Angeles with offices in New York, Washington DC, Florida and Hawaii.