San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie was flying to Asia on Friday for sister city visits in China and South Korea. Lurie is scheduled to visit Shanghai and Seoul to strengthen relationships with the two San Francisco sister cities, deepen arts and culture partnerships, and promote tourism to San Fran cisco, according to his office. “We are heading out to Shanghai and to Seoul, two of our beloved sister cities, to continue to build bridges, city to city, people to people, showing off the best of our arts and culture, and going to see some of theirs,” Lurie said in a video shared by his office. “We just have an incredible Chinese and Korean community here in San Francisco, and we want to go tell the world just how great San Francisco is and invite them to visit our city that’s on the rise.” Lurie’s office did not immediately share a formal itinerary for his visits to Shanghai and Seoul. One of his highest priorities since taking office is trying to change perceptions of San Francisco and attract tourists back. Before the pandemic, Asian tourism was key to San Francisco’s economic success, but after years of travel slumps, bringing them back, particularly travelers from mainland China, is proving to be a significant challenge. In 2019, travelers from mainland China were about a $1.2 billion segment of the city’s tourism economy. Since the pandemic, Chinese travel has rebounded a bit. In December, there were about 20,000 passengers arriving from mainland China, but before the pandemic that number was around 40,000. Travel restrictions imposed by the Trump administration have made it more difficult for Chinese tourists to get visas. ...read more read less