Janice Lai (賴瑟珍), the director-general of Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau, stressed the importance of regional cooperation in the travel sector as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ministerial meeting on tourism opened in the ancient Japanese capital of Nara yesterday.
Part of a Taiwanese delegation led by Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國), Lai said this year’s ministerial meeting was particularly significant because it would address the issues of tourism as an engine of economic growth and sustainability in the industry.
Inbound tourism cooperation and new tourism models, including ecotourism, were among the topics to be discussed as part of the general focus on sustainable and inclusive growth in the region.
“Developing these new models in Taiwan will require stronger regional cooperation. Taiwan’s delegation wants to share its experiences at this meeting and learn all it can from others,” Lai said prior to the meeting.
Taiwan’s tourism industry, listed by the government as one of the six key emerging industries in the country, was one of the few in the region to experience growth last year, and the sector has remained robust this year.
Visitor arrivals in the first eight months of the year were up 27.5 percent year-on-year at 3.6 million, the Tourism Bureau said.
On the opening day of the meeting yesterday, Mao exchanged greetings with China National Tourism Administration vice chairman Zhu Shanzhong (祝善忠). However, Zhu was shunned by the event’s host.
The APEC tourism ministerial meeting is being held at a time of growing tensions between China and Japan over Japan’s detention of a Chinese fishing boat captain after he rammed his boat into Japanese Coast Guard vessels near the disputed Diaoyutai Islands.
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