Originally Posted by
exbayern
I don't think that most Chinese tourists expect or demand that people in other languages speak Mandarin, or that signage is in Chinese characters.
But I also didn't run across any English-speaking travelers demanding that locals in other countries speak English either... Granted, in many places people with jobs that interact with tourists do speak some English. But we also spoke quite a bit of French and a little bit of broken Italian along the way, too. People seem to get along: I never observed language differences as a source of tension or pushiness on the part of the visitor, perhaps a little bit of mild inconvenience at the most. (Certainly no one angrily demanding an English-language menu or anything like that.) If there was tension between two non-English speakers, it wasn't noticeable to me.
I think that ship has sailed. Look around FT for people who say they won't visit the US for the reasons you list, not to mention how many people I know in real life who say the same. I saw how TSA treated groups of Japanese tourists at LAS more than once, and cringed. While the US government and travel industry may be focussing on visas to improve tourism, they need to fix that impression of point of entry first. Waiting 2-3 hours at immigration, and then being yelled at by TSOs before boarding a connecting flight doesn't make a good first impression on visitors.
No disagreement there... (Although fixing some of the most arduous visa processes could be helpful to many people since these things tend to be reciprocal...)