Pointing to the growth in the number of tourists visiting Taiwan over the past three years, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that it is possible that the total number of tourists visiting the nation will exceed 10 million in 2016.
Speaking at National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism before meeting with students, Ma said that in the past the growth in the number of tourists visiting Taiwan was only an additional 1 million per decade, but in the past three years tourism growth has exceeded a million every year.
He said 3.7 million tourists visited Taiwan in 2007, rising to 3.8 million in 2008. However, in 2010 4.3 million tourists visited Taiwan and 6 million arrived last year.
It is possible that the nation could see a total of 7 million by the end of this year, Ma said.
The speed of growth is unprecedented and it is evidence that Taiwan is a potential tourist hot spot, Ma said.
He also said that of the 6 million tourists that visited last year, Chinese tourists made up only 1 million, while the rest comprised of tourists from Southeast Asian countries or Japan, adding that there were also a staggering 800,000 tourists from Hong Kong and Macau.
Taiwan’s appeal is not only its rich gastronomic culture and its beautiful scenery, but also its strong morals, Ma said, pointing to the example of how a Japanese visitor had received back his wallet after losing it in Taiwan six months previously, or the recent incident in which renowned Taiwanese writer Wu Nien-jen (吳念真) had his mobile phone returned to him before he had left the station after he left it on a high-speed train.
A student from Malaysia also spoke during the meeting with Ma, saying that the Taiwanese attitude toward foreigners was one of the nation’s greatest attributes.
Tourism is not all about quantity, but also quality, and we need to set high standards for Taiwanese tourism, Ma said.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
The Taipei City Reserve Command yesterday initiated its first-ever 14-day recall of some of the city’s civilian service reservists, who are to undergo additional training on top of refresher courses. The command said that it rented sites in Neihu District (內湖), including the Taipei Tennis Center, for the duration of the camp to optimize tactical positioning and accommodate the size of the battalion of reservists. A battalion is made up of four companies of more than 200 reservists each, it said. Aside from shooting drills at a range in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), the remainder of the training would be at
RSS