Kinmen working to attract tourists

Kinmen County Commissioner Lee Chu-feng (李炷烽) yesterday urged travel agents and other members of the tourism industry operating on the outlying island of Kinmen to make greater efforts to help it gain a larger slice of the cross-strait "tourism pie."

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Addressing the opening of a tourism training workshop, Lee, a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), called for Kinmen-based travel agencies and related tourism operators to upgrade their service quality so they can attract more tourists from China to undertake sightseeing trips to Kinmen.

A total of 202 people representing travel agencies, hotels, restaurants, shops and bus companies around Kinmen took part in the training workshop sponsored by the Kinmen County Government.

Lee quoted tallies from the Kinmen County Bureau of Tourism as indicating that Kinmen has attracted more than 43,000 Chinese tourists since China began allowing residents of Fujian Province to make sightseeing trips to Kinmen in December 2004.

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According to the tallies, Lee said, 64 people in four tourist groups from Fujian visited Kinmen in 2004, with the figures increasing to 3,129 people in 170 groups in 2005 and 20,067 people in 1,040 groups last year.

So far this year, more than 20,000 Fujienese tourists in 853 groups have visited Kinmen, he added.

Also addressing the workshop, KMT Legislator Wu Cherng-dean (吳成典) said that there was no reason why Kinmen -- with a cultural history of more than 1,600 years, an interesting contemporary history filled with major battles and an ideal geographical position between China and Taiwan -- could not become a major tourism destination.