Taiwan made the top 10 list of countries that saw the most bookings of hotel rooms through Hotels.com by Chinese tourists last year, according to a survey by the hotel booking Web site.
In the survey, Hotels.com also found that 88.7 percent of hotels in Taiwan reported an increase in Chinese guests and 39.7 percent of the hotels said spending by Chinese visitors accounted for at least 20 percent of their revenue last year.
According to the number of room nights booked on the Hotels.com Chinese Web site last year, Taiwan entered the top 10 list of travel destinations for the first time in ninth place.
The top four places saw no change from 2012, with the US, Hong Kong, Thailand and Japan all maintaining their positions, according to the third edition of the Hotels.com Chinese International Travel Monitor, which was released in Dallas, Texas, on Tuesday.
The next three slots were occupied by France, which was up five notches from 2012, Britain, which was a new entrant, and Italy, which was up one notch, according to the report.
Three other Asian countries, including Taiwan, rounded out the top 10, with South Korea slipping one place to eighth and Malaysia dropping four places to 10th.
Taiwan has attracted a growing number of Chinese tourists as cross-strait relations improve and travel becomes easier with increasing direct flights and independent travelers being allowed to visit the nation.
Last year, more than 2.87 million Chinese nationals visited Taiwan, compared with just under 1 million in 2009, when China officially overtook Japan to become Taiwan’s top inbound market for the first time.
According to the National Immigration Agency, as of March, the total number of Chinese independent travelers had increased by 177 percent year-on-year, while Chinese group travelers had increased 17 percent.
The Chinese International Travel Monitor aims to examine in some detail the phenomenon of the huge growth in outbound tourism by Chinese travelers and its impact on the global travel industry, according to the Hotels.com Web site.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching