Disneyland for the first time sent salespeople to a trade show in China to promote the park.

And at the Shanghai Spring travel agency in Alhambra, northeast of downtown Los Angeles, owner Jan Huang has contracted four new tour buses and hopes to double her staff of tour guides to 20.

It’s all in preparation for what they hope could be a boom in new Chinese tourism to the United States that is expected to occur next year. Both nations are finalizing a deal to ease entry restrictions and lift a ban in China on promoting travel to the United States.

The negotiations have been going on for several years, but China government news agencies and sources at the U.S. Commerce Department said a deal should be completed within the next few weeks.

The new travel rules are expected to be a particular boon to Southern California, which already sees more Chinese tourists — 110,000 in Los Angles County last year — than anywhere else in the United States. But travel officials expect that number to grow significantly if more members of China’s emerging middle and upper classes are able to travel here for vacations.

“The Chinese middle class has been accumulating tremendous wealth,” said Baizhu Chen, a professor of clinical finance and business economics at the University of Southern California. “They’re buying houses and cars, and now they want to travel. The Chinese have been closed for so long, they’re eager to see the outside world.”

In some ways, the situation appears similar to that of two decades ago, when free-spending Japanese flooded the likes of Disneyland and snatched up luxury goods on Rodeo Drive. But Chen and others expect the Chinese to spend their money on higher-end shopping rather than on expensive restaurants and hotels. “The first batch of Chinese tourists won’t be that sophisticated,” said Chen, the USC professor. “They will come in tour groups, not as individuals, and will need to stay in places where people speak their language.”

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