The March earthquake and tsunami in Japan, a deadly derailment on the Alishan Forest Railway in April and a plasticizer food scare have dragged down growth in international tourist arrivals, which rose only 5 percent in the first six months of this year, the Tourism Bureau said last week.
Statistics from the bureau showed that 2.85 million international tourists arrived between January and June, a 5 percent growth compared with the same period last year.
Tourism Bureau Director--General Janice Lai (賴瑟珍) said that despite the modest growth, the bureau had no intention of adjusting its goal of receiving 6.5 million international visitors this year.
About 5.57 million international tourists visited the nation last year. The bureau originally raised the goal this year to 6 million, but the Executive Yuan raised the goal by another 500,000 tourists.
Meanwhile, Lai said that about 12,000 Chinese tourists had obtained travel passes issued by the Public Security Department in China to visit Taiwan as free and independent travelers (FIT).
The FIT policy has been under scrutiny lately as it drew only 500 tourists in the first month after the policy was launched.
At present, only people from Shanghai, Beijing and Xiamen are allowed to visit as FITs. Taiwan and China agreed to cap the number of Chinese FITs at 500 a day at in the initial stage.
Lai said 4,790 permits had been given in Shanghai since June, 28, 4,780 in Beijing and 2,490 in Xiamen. However, Lai said the National Immigration Agency had reviewed only 1,717 applications for travel permits. A total of 1,356 have been issued. Lai said both sides would review the FIT policy next month to try to further streamline application procedures.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
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The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
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