The Tourism Bureau yesterday said 11 more Chinese cities have been added to the free independent travelers (FIT) program after negotiations between Taipei and Beijing: Haiko, Hohhot, Lanzhou, Yinchuan, Changzhou, Zhoushan, Huizhou, Weihai, Lonyan, Guilin and Xuzhou.
The program, which began in June 2011, includes residents from a limited number of Chinese cities.
With the latest expansion, 47 Chinese cities are in the program.
Bureau statistics showed that the number of independent Chinese travelers topped 2.19 million between June 2011 and last month. About 1.18 million arrived last year, growing by 127 percent compared with 2013.
The average number of such travelers per day has grown from 3,251 people last year to 4,554 between January and last month.
The bureau said that the government maintains the entry permit quota at 4,000 per day for independent Chinese travelers, even though more cities have joined the program. It also said that it would evaluate the market situation before considering raising the quota.
The bureau emphasized that the program allows Chinese tourists to embark on self-arranged tours in different regions of Taiwan, bringing them closer to the lives of ordinary people and helping them experience the culture and customs of the nation.
To attract more independent travelers from China, the bureau has planned to expand tourism campaigns via its offices in Beijing and Shanghai.
The campaigns are to highlight in-depth tours around Taiwan that would tap into the markets of business and youth travelers, such as cultural tours or bike tours.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,