The Cabinet on Friday said that in a bid to stem the steep decline in the number of Chinese tourists, the Tourism Bureau is to lead a delegation to China to promote travel in Taiwan.
The delegation is to organize promotional events in Beijing and Shanghai in conjunction with Taiwanese representative offices, Cabinet spokesman Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) said.
The government also plans to initiate programs to court Southeast Asian and Muslim visitors, Tung said.
The move came after the bankruptcy of a Taiwanese travel agency on Wednesday, which specialized in arranging package tours for Chinese, and ahead of a protest planned by travel firms for Tuesday.
“We have observed a decline in [Chinese] group tourists recently, which has impacted local tourism, especially tour bus operators and agencies specializing in package tours,” Premier Lin Chuan (林全) said yesterday.
“Both group tourists and individual tourists are welcome. Both are advantageous to the development of the nation’s tourism,” Lin said, in response to the demand of travel agencies to boost the number of tourists visiting on package tours.
According to Tourism Bureau data, the number of Chinese tourists decreased 52,983 annually last month, or 15.01 percent.
The number of Chinese tourists has declined since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was sworn in, with Chinese visitor numbers declining by 12.21 percent year-on-year in May and by 11.88 percent annually in June, the data showed.
Minister Without Portfolio Chang Ching-sen (張景森), who heads a task force to boost Chinese tourist numbers, said the outlook is not rosy, but it is not Taiwan that is driving Chinese tourists away.
Chang called on Beijing not to use tourism as a political tool, saying that would hurt the chances of beneficial bilateral interactions.
Despite the decline in Chinese tourists, there were 6.28 million tourists from January to last month, representing growth of 7.9 percent from the same period last year, and the number of tourists grew 1.9 percent monthly last month alone, Tung said.
The growth is the result of an increased number of Japanese and South Korean tourists, with the number of Japanese travelers increasing by 17.5 percent annually and the number of South Korean visitors increasing by 52.8 percent annually in the January-to-July period, Tung said.
The growth indicates that the government’s promotional efforts in Japan and South Korea are paying off, and a visa-waiver program offered to Thais and Bruneians starting this month is expected to attract more visitors, he said.
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