The number of Chinese visitors in January climbed 9.27 percent year-on-year to 238,906, rising for the first time since September last year, Tourism Bureau statistics showed.
Of the nearly 239,000 Chinese visitors, 185,398 were traveling for leisure and 1,115 for business, while the remainder were traveling for other reasons, such as visiting relatives, attending conferences or exhibitions, studying or receiving medical treatment, the bureau said, adding that the number of leisure travelers grew by 4.06 percent year-on-year.
The bureau recorded 867,711 foreign visitor arrivals in January, a slight annual decline of 0.53 percent, the statistics showed.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Visitor numbers from Hong Kong and Macau (100,703), Japan (146,184) and South Korea (116,976) fell by 5.39 percent, 9.71 percent and 9.57 percent year-on-year respectively, they showed.
The number of visitors from Southeast Asia — including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam — grew to 160,561 in January, an annual increase of just 2.07 percent, the bureau said.
The number of visitors from Vietnam dropped by 20.74 percent compared with January last year, the largest decline among Southeast Asian nations, it said, adding that the number of visitors from Singapore and Malaysia also dropped by more than 7 percent each.
The statistics showed that the number of Russian visitors rose from 646 last year to 1,027 this year, an increase of 58.98 percent.
Huang Cheng-tsung (黃正聰), an associate professor in the tourism department at Taichung’s Providence University, said he expects the number of Russian visitors to continue to rise with the commencement of direct flights between Taiwan and Russian cities Moscow and Vladivostok in May.
January’s growth in Chinese visitors was largely because of an increase in independent travelers, bureau deputy director-general Chang Hsi-tsung (張錫聰) said.
Over the past few years, the bureau has focused efforts at its offices in Beijing and Shanghai on promoting independent travel, he said, adding that the beginning of winter break for Chinese college and university students also contributed to the increase in independent travelers.
Additional flights between China and Taiwan during the Lunar New Year holiday meant that Chinese travelers were relatively unaffected by the surge in demand over the holidays, he said.
However, Chang attributed the fall in visitors from other regions to the Lunar New Year holiday.
Many Taiwanese flew out of the country at the end of January, leading to a shortage of seats for foreign travelers, he said.
Visitor numbers from Vietnam were affected by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ decision to suspend the “Kuan Hung Pilot Project” electronic visa program for Vietnamese tour groups in December last year after the disappearance of more than 100 Vietnamese tourists, Huang said, adding that the program is to resume later this month.
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