The direct charter flights from Beijing and Hangzhou to Copenhagen will attract more Chinese tourists to Denmark, a Danish tourism official said on Friday.

"Direct air routes are crucial for us to get more Chinese tourists to Denmark," said Jan Olsen, the CEO of VisitDenmark. "Chinese tourists are like Americans - if it is too difficult to come here, they do not bother."

Olsen's comments came after Copenhagen Airport on Friday revealed that Beijing Capital Airlines will launch direct charter flights from Beijing and Hangzhou to Copenhagen from the autumn of 2015.

Signe Jungersted, the market development manager of Wonderful Copenhagen, the official convention bureau of the greater Copenhagen area, also expressed great expectations for the new Chinese charter flights routes, saying that direct connection to the metropolis Hangzhou opens a new geographic area of China for Copenhagen.

She added that it would also ensure additional connection to Beijing in a period of high Chinese travel activities because of the week-long National Day holiday that begins around October 1.

The Beijing route is expected to start on September 6, while the Hangzhou route is scheduled for September 3. The airline, which will use Airbus A330 on the routes, will operate two flights a week.

The latest statistics in June revealed that Copenhagen is the favorite Danish destination among Chinese tourists, with the number of overnight stays in the country's capital increasing by 148 percent in the past four years.

However, the Chinese are not yet the leading tourist group in Denmark. According to VisitDenmark, Chinese tourists enjoyed just over 160,000 overnight stays in Denmark in 2014, while German tourists managed more than 12.9 million.

"The number of Chinese tourists has increased in recent years, but China is still a relatively small market," Olsen said. Endit

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