The number of Chinese tourists is estimated to decrease this year as much as 650,000 from last year, but the government remains confident that the nation will reach its goal of hosting more than 10 million international tourists this year, Minister of Transportation and Communication Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) said yesterday.
Hochen made the remarks during a speech at a tourism forum, where government officials and travel industry representatives discussed strategies to counter the challenges facing the industry in the next 10 years.
“There is an apparent decrease in the number of Chinese tourists in the first six months of this year, which should be a warning. It should also be treated be as an opportunity to deal with the changes in the market in a more flexible manner while we pursue growth,” Hochen said.
A range of events can affect the tourism industry, from oil price hikes to terrorist attacks, he said, adding that business operators in the travel industry should not expect to have tailwinds all the time and should tackle problems.
The ministry estimates that the number of Chinese tourists might fall by between 600,000 and 650,000 this year, which would inevitably lead to losses in revenue, Hochen said.
However, the overall number of international tourists was growing as of last month, with tourism output forecast to grow by 3 percent this year to reach NT$500 billion (US$15.8 billion), he added.
Tourism operators should not turn pessimistic about market prospects due to small changes, but should seek to expand their output and strive to improve service quality, he said.
The number of international tourists increased by 2 percent from January to July, despite the decline in Chinese tourists, Hochen said, adding that the nation can attract more tourists from South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Thailand in the next four months with its favorable weather conditions and tourist attractions.
The launch of a visa waiver program for tourists from Thailand and Brunei will also encourage more people to visit Taiwan, he said.
As for the government’s plan to send a delegation to China to promote Taiwan as a travel destination, Hochen said that the ministry is taking a cautious attitude.
People would focus on the diplomatic details if the government intervened too much in the matter, which would defeat the purpose of the trip, he said.
“We would be happy to see further exchanges between Chinese travel agencies and Taiwanese tour operators, who can build on the trust and friendship that have been established over the years and jointly develop better products,” he said.
Regarding a planned protest by travel operators on Sept. 12 over the decline in the number of Chinese tourists, Hochen said that the ministry has confidence in the nation’s tourism industry, adding that the decline in the number of Chinese tourists arriving on group tours is temporary.
“We have seen an increase, rather than a decline, in independent travelers from China in July, followed by a small decline in this category last month. We think that people in China still feel comfortable traveling to Taiwan because of the freedom and self-confidence shown by people here, even though the comfort might be disrupted in the short term by safety concerns and the political atmosphere,” he said.
The complaints mainly come from travel agencies, souvenir shops and hotels that serve mostly Chinese customers, Hochen said.
This shows that businesses that put all their eggs in one basket would be having a difficult time as the nation is seeing fewer Chinese tourists than before, he said.
While the government would identify and help the regions that are affected by the decline in Chinese tourists, tour operators that do not focus on the Chinese market should rest reassured that they have an opportunity to develop their businesses, Hochen said.
“Chinese tourists might not choose to come in the short term because of the [July 19] bus fire, but it is the political reasons that prevent Chinese tourists from coming,” Travel Agent Association deputy chairman Hsiao Bo-jen (蕭博仁) said. “Beijing would most likely ignore a Taiwanese tourism industry delegation, even if it is formed by the government.”
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: