Starting Saturday, direct marketing firm Pro Health (China) Co (寶健中國) is scheduled to send about 10,000 employees on an incentive tour to Taiwan.
The employees will arrive in seven separate groups between Oct. 30 and Nov. 24.
They will embark on a six-day tour and check out tourist attractions in Taipei City, Taichung City, as well as Taipei, Changhua and Nantou counties, but will skip Kaohsiung.
Company president Jason Li (李道) denied that there were political considerations in the way it arranged the tour. He said they made the reservations a while ago.
Li estimated the incentive tour could bring more than NT$600 million (US$20 million) to Taiwan.
The travel agency that helped arrange the tour for Pro Health said that many of the Pro Health employees who will come this time have never visited Taiwan before.
Though the employees cannot visit Alishan this time, Li said they could still see Taipei 101, which in his words was the “New Alishan.”
In related news, a Chinese tourism delegation headed by National Tourism Administration Vice Chairman Wang Zhifa (王志發) arrived in Taiwan yesterday for a cross-strait travel fair that is scheduled to open tomorrow in Taipei.
Wang said that the delegation would be the biggest from China ever to attend a travel fair in Taiwan.
The Chinese group is comprised of 486 representatives from 308 different tourism offices in provinces, administrative regions and cities, and travel agencies throughout China, Wang said.
The travel fair — jointly organized by the Taiwan Visitors Association and the Beijing-based Cross-Strait Tourism Exchange Association — will be held in conjunction with the 2009 Taipei International Travel Fair at the Taipei World Trade Center from tomorrow to Monday.
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