There are many popular tourism locations in northern Taiwan apart from the National Palace Museum (NPM), some of which are more popular, Tourism Bureau Planning Division section chief Wu Chieh-ping (吳潔萍) said on Monday.
According to museum documents unveiled by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko Chih-en (柯志恩) at a legislative hearing on Monday, the museum’s main building in Taipei is scheduled to be closed in 2020, with renovation work to take place in 2022 and 2023, prompting fears that the nation’s tourism industry might be negatively affected.
The Executive Yuan yesterday said it would prefer if the Taipei branch remained open during renovations.
Photo: Lu Chun-wei, Taipei Times
Museum Director Chen Chi-nan (陳其南) said that the museum would try to keep the branch open during renovations, because it attracts nearly 5 million visitors a year — 75 percent of whom are from overseas.
In 2015, Chinese comprised 40.08 percent of all foreign tourists, but the figure dropped to 25.44 percent last year, bureau statistics showed.
The drop has been reflected in the number of foreign visitors to the museum’s Taipei branch, as 48 in every 100 foreign visitors in 2015 were Chinese, but dropped to 42 in 2016 and 35 last year, Wu said.
However, tourists from countries targeted by the government’s New Southbound Policy jumped from 14.87 percent in 2015 to 21.27 percent last year, bureau statistics showed.
For the past three years, foreign visitor numbers have surpassed 10 million and keep growing, with 10.43 million foreign visitors arriving in 2015, 10.69 million visiting in 2016 and 10.74 million arriving last year.
Due to the shift in tourist origins, night markets are the most popular, followed by the Taipei 101 skyscraper and the town of Jiufen (九份) in New Taipei City, which has since last year surpassed the museum’s Taipei branch in popularity, Wu said.
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