Tourism industry faces uphill battle for foreign visitors

With a significant drop in inbound tourism figures reported for the first quarter, the government faces a long and bumpy road in its effort to woo more foreign tourists to the country, especially Japanese visitors.

According to statistics released by the Tourism Bureau last week, inbound tourists in the first quarter stood at 673,449, a decrease of 10.93 percent compared with the same period last year.

The figure for last month was 239,575, a decline of 7.19 percent from March last year.

"The Japanese market, which accounts for one-third of the inbound travellers, has not yet rebounded," said Tseng Kuo-chi (曾國基), the bureau's public relations chief, yesterday.

Tseng said there are three major reasons for the declining number of Japanese tourists, who tend to be more cautious than other people when making travel plans.

"The bird-flu epidemic, the bombings in Spain and the post-election political turmoil last month have more or less undermined the tourism business," Tseng said.

The reports about two new SARS cases in China may also dampen sentiment within the industry, one hotel veteran said yesterday.

"We were originally looking forward to Japan's `Golden Week' [April 29 to May 9] holidays to stimulate the market, but we're now afraid the resurgence of the [SARS] epidemic might lead to a few trip cancellations," said Ellen Chang (張筠), marketing and communications manager at the Grand Formosa Regent Hotel.

The five-star Taipei hotel -- which says about 45 percent of its guests come from Japan -- saw its occupancy rate drop to around 40 percent in the second quarter last year from some 80 percent in the previous year.

The first half of last year was the industry's worst in 30 years, after foreign and local tourists cancelled their travel plans due to fears over SARS.

To revive the inbound market, South East Travel Services (東南旅行社) has cooperated with the Tourism Bureau and other travel agencies since August last year to promote a four-day-and-three-night tour of Taiwan.

"The project has not achieved a favorable effect because it charges too much -- US$338 per person -- for an around-the-island tour," said Johnny Tseng (曾國澄), director of domestic tours at South East.

To boost the nation's tourism sector, the Cabinet launched a six-year project in 2002, aiming to double the number of foreign tourists visiting the country by 2008 to 5 million.

This project pools resources from several large travel agencies, such as Zion Tours (錫安 旅遊), Eztravel.com (易遊網), Edi-son Travel Service (宏祥旅行社) and South East, as well as the Howard Hotel and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空).

"We have attracted 550 foreign tourists for the package that sets out every Wednesday. I'm very confident about the project," said Stephen Wu (吳西謙), president of Zion Tours.

"With our mission to advertise Taiwan, we'll continue to promote the project until 2008," Wu said.