The Tourism Bureau said the nation has been generating a tourism revenue surplus since 2011, adding that the increase of Chinese tourists did not push Japanese tourists away.
The bureau was responding to reports by the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) that cited Providence University professor Hwang Cheng-tsung (黃正聰) as saying that tourism benefits should not be viewed only from the aspect of revenue, adding that while Taiwan takes pride in having 8 million visitor arrivals last year, it fails to see that every year, Taiwanese make 10 million tourist visits overseas.
Another story in the Liberty Times cited a report published by the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center that asked the government to restrict the quota reserved for Chinese tourists and enhance campaigns to attract tourists from countries with greater spending power, such as Japan.
The bureau said that Taiwan has enjoyed a surplus in tourism revenue since 201l, when the income brought by inbound tourists exceeded the expenditure of outbound tourists by NT$28.1 billion (US$936 million). Last year’s surplus was smaller, as tourism revenue topped NT$366.8 billion, while the expenditure of outbound tourists reached NT$366.3 billion, but comparing the amount spent by outbound tourists and by inbound tourists can be misleading, it said.
This is because expenditure of outbound tourists includes the money spent on flight tickets, which accounts for about half or one-third of travel expenditures, while the revenue brought by inbound tourists does not include money spent on flight tickets, it said.
Regarding the cross-strait tourism market, the ratio between Chinese tourists in Taiwan and Taiwanese tourists in China dropped from 0.95 in 2008 to 0.44 last year, statistics from the bureau showed.
Meanwhile, the deficit in the cross-strait tourism market shrank from US$4.151 billion in 2008 to US$726 million last year. The deficit turned into surplus in the first half of this year, when Chinese tourists brought US$3.63 billion in revenue. By contrast, the expenditure of Taiwanese tourists traveling domestically reached US$3.06 billion.
The bureau said that about 50 percent of Taiwanese visitors to China are Taiwanese businesspeople, who tend to go in and out of China multiple times throughout the year. About 75 percent of Chinese visitors to Taiwan came for tourism purposes only, it said.
The bureau denied that Japanese tourists were pushed out by the large number of Chinese tourist arriving in the nation.
Statistics from the bureau indicated that about 783,000 Japanese tourists visited between January and June this year, about 18.5 percent more than in the same period last year, it said.
The Japan Association of Travel Agents has projected year-on-year growth of 40 percent in the third quarter this year, the bureau said. The bureau also said that the devaluation of the yen and the rise in Japan’s sales tax had discouraged Japanese from traveling abroad and spending while traveling last year.
The bureau said the number of South Korean visitors grew by 79.81 percent between January and June this year. Arrivals from Malaysia increased by 27 percent in that time, while those from Hong Kong and Macau rose by 18.55 percent. Double-digit growth was also seen in arrivals from Europe, North America, New Zealand and Australia.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS