Hoteliers in Kenting National Park are expecting a decline in occupancy rates during China’s National Day holiday, which began on Monday, due to a decline in the number of Chinese tourists.
Tourism operators and hoteliers consider the seven-day holiday, also known as the “Golden Week,” as the last chance to boost their business before Taiwan enters the off-peak travel season, as Chinese visit family or go on holidays.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) yesterday in a report quoted an anonymous hotel manager in Kenting as saying that business during the holiday would be only slightly better than a regular weekend and about the same as the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday last month.
Occupancy rates during the week might be 40 percent lower than a year earlier, the manager said, adding that hostels and car rental firms in Kenting are offering discounts to attract customers.
Asked why the number of Chinese tourists has been declining, some hoteliers told the newspaper that Beijing has deliberately curtailed the number of travelers to Taiwan since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office in May 2016, adding that the policy hit southern Taiwan the hardest.
The Chinese government hopes that economic issues would sway the results of next month’s nine-in-one elections, they said.
The decline in tourists also caused many vendors at the night market on Kenting Main Street to close early, the report said, adding that news about some popular hotels in the area closing down or changing ownership has been circulating all year.
A total of 2.11 million people visited Kenting National Park in the first seven months of this year, down by about 450,000 visitors from the same period a year earlier, park data show.
In its heyday, the park attracted up to 8.37 million people a year, the data show.
Some tourism operators also cited the local elections and the lengthy and complicated processes involved in applying for entry permits to Taiwan as reasons for the decline in Chinese tourists.
The National Immigration Agency asks Chinese applying for multiple-entry permits to provide supplementary information and to sign an affidavit promising that they will not engage in political activities during their visit to Taiwan, the operators said.
Chinese are asked to apply for a single-entry permit if they cannot state any compelling reason to apply for a multiple-entry permit, or if their reasons were rejected by immigration officials, they said.
Kenting’s night market was also earlier this year voted as one of the nation’s three worst night markets in a survey conducted by Yam News, after local media reported that night market vendors overcharged visitors.
Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chang Chen-yuan (張政源) last month unveiled a plan to attract more domestic and Southeast Asian tourists to Kenting.
The ministry would also make sure that next year’s Taiwan Lantern Festival, which is to be held in Pingtung County, is a hit among visitors, Chang said.
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