Taiwan plans to attract 12 million foreign tourists this year, Tourism Administration Director-General Chou Yung-hui (周永暉) said yesterday as he unveiled incentives targeting Japanese tourists.
Chou made the remark in an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister paper of the Taipei Times) that was posted online yesterday.
The agency’s tourism policy is to focus on four sectors, and it hopes to attract 2 million tourists each from Japan and South Korea, and 3.85 million from six Southeast Asian countries — Indonesia, India, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.
Photo: Wu Liang-yi, Taipei Times
In Europe, the agency would focus on the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands, he said.
The Tourism Administration would work with the National Park Services, and the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency to promote ecotourism and indigenous tours, he added.
Chou said the agency has observed that the number of Japanese people with passports dropped from 23 percent before the COVID-19 pandemic to 18 percent after the pandemic.
The agency works with China Airlines Ltd (中華航空), EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空), Tigerair Taiwan Ltd (台灣虎航) and Starlux Airlines (星宇航空) to incentivize international traveling, Chou said.
Starting next month, Japanese holding newly issued passports who are traveling to Taiwan would be offered a fare discount of ￥5,000 (US$33.60) from any one of the aforementioned airlines, Chou said.
Tigerair is offering an additional reduction of ￥5,000, bringing the total discount to ￥10,000, he added.
The agency hopes to attract 200,000 Japanese tourists with the help of such discounts, he said.
The agency is aware that the tourism industry is experiencing a worker shortage and it is working closely with the Ministry of Labor to bring in migrant workers to help alleviate the situation, Chou said.
The agency is planning a new program that would pick up people from around Alishan (阿里山) and take them to Tainan, Kaohsiung, Pingtung and Taitung, he said.
Taiwan’s ban on group tours visiting China was in response to Beijing’s ban on its citizens visiting Taiwan, Chou said.
Tourism policies should be mutually beneficial, he said, adding that if China reconsiders allowing its citizens to visit Taiwan, “reciprocal measures can be discussed.”
If there is more dialogue across the Taiwan Strait and China is sincere, the agency might restart group tours, he said.
If Chinese tourists are allowed to visit Taiwan, the Tourism Administration would advise travel agencies to avoid jampacked tour models, in which travelers visit several significant sites across the nation in seven days, he said.
Instead, travelers should be taken on in-depth tours of a region, as this would help them experience more of Taiwan, he said.
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