Taiwan’s sex business operators are using Internet advertising to lure independent Chinese tourists recently allowed to visit the island, local media reported.
A cluster of hostess clubs in a Taipei district have been touting “Ecstasy Taiwan solo trips” on Chinese-language Web sites abroad hoping for a share in the country’s booming tourism market, cable news channel SET TV said.
The ads have drawn numerous responses from Chinese Web users with some clubs offering afternoon sessions to expand their business beyond the usual night hours, the Apple Daily said.
“We often have Chinese customers ... who are in their 40s or 50s,” the newspaper quoted a hostess as saying.
However, the ad campaigns have also caught the eye of local police and at least three clubs have been forced to close down recently, SET TV said.
Police were not immediately available to comment on the reports.
While there are no official statistics detailing the scale of Taiwan’s sex industry, observers estimate it involves hundreds of thousands of people and generates billions of Taiwanese dollars a year.
The Executive Yuan recently passed a bill, pending the legislature’s approval, to allow the establishment of special zones as the island moves to regulate and decriminalize the sex trade.
Last year, more than 1.63 million Chinese visited Taiwan — most of them on organized group tours — a rise of 67 percent from the previous year. However, Taiwanese tourism operators have been surprised at the fewer-than-expected independent Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan since a ban on such travel was lifted on June 28.
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