Pointing to the growth in the number of tourists visiting Taiwan over the past three years, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that it is possible that the total number of tourists visiting the nation will exceed 10 million in 2016.
Speaking at National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism before meeting with students, Ma said that in the past the growth in the number of tourists visiting Taiwan was only an additional 1 million per decade, but in the past three years tourism growth has exceeded a million every year.
He said 3.7 million tourists visited Taiwan in 2007, rising to 3.8 million in 2008. However, in 2010 4.3 million tourists visited Taiwan and 6 million arrived last year.
It is possible that the nation could see a total of 7 million by the end of this year, Ma said.
The speed of growth is unprecedented and it is evidence that Taiwan is a potential tourist hot spot, Ma said.
He also said that of the 6 million tourists that visited last year, Chinese tourists made up only 1 million, while the rest comprised of tourists from Southeast Asian countries or Japan, adding that there were also a staggering 800,000 tourists from Hong Kong and Macau.
Taiwan’s appeal is not only its rich gastronomic culture and its beautiful scenery, but also its strong morals, Ma said, pointing to the example of how a Japanese visitor had received back his wallet after losing it in Taiwan six months previously, or the recent incident in which renowned Taiwanese writer Wu Nien-jen (吳念真) had his mobile phone returned to him before he had left the station after he left it on a high-speed train.
A student from Malaysia also spoke during the meeting with Ma, saying that the Taiwanese attitude toward foreigners was one of the nation’s greatest attributes.
Tourism is not all about quantity, but also quality, and we need to set high standards for Taiwanese tourism, Ma said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened 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), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS