The future of travel subsidies designed to boost domestic tourism depends on whether Beijing relaxes travel restrictions on its citizens visiting Taiwan, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said on Tuesday.
Lin made the statement at the ministry’s New Year media conference when asked if the ministry would continue the subsidies this year.
“I cannot answer the question now, because it depends on Beijing’s policy on Chinese tourists traveling to Taiwan, which is not in our hands,” Lin said. “We welcome Chinese tourists and hope that the Chinese government lifts restrictions on tours to Taiwan after the elections on Saturday. If we receive a goodwill gesture [from Beijing], we could use a different approach to subsidize domestic tourists, or we might not necessarily have to use subsidies at all.”
Since 2018, the ministry has rolled out seven travel subsidies at a total cost of about NT$5.6 billion (US$186.1 million at the current exchange rate).
Although the Tourism Bureau has said the programs have increased hotel occupancy, some experts and travel agents have said that the subsidies were only “a quick dose of morphine.”
However, they also said that tourists would be less likely to travel the nation if the government ended them.
The subsidies have produced significant results in the short term, but their main purpose is to change how the nation’s tourism industry operates within one to two years, during which the quality and output value of domestic tourism could be enhanced, Lin said.
The government would assess whether these subsidies have created side effects, he said.
At a separate event, Lin said Taiwan should seek to attract more than 12 million international tourists this year, as last year it brought in 11.84 million.
“Chinese tourists, which account for about 25 percent of the nation’s international visitors, would be the main variable this year,” he said. “However, the nation still has room to grow in terms of tourists from Japan, South Korea and ASEAN nations.”
In response to a question on whether the government would cover the shortfall in revenue from the decrease in Chinese visitors by subsidizing domestic tourists, Tourism Bureau Director-General Chou Yung-hui (周永暉) said that although domestic and international tourism are separate businesses, they would both affect hotel occupancy rates.
Travel subsidies are effective in raising hotel occupancy rates, but the nation needs to do more to encourage people to travel locally and spend more days at their travel destinations, he said.
Regarding international tourists, the bureau would expand its target from people who could travel to Taiwan by airplane within three hours to those who could arrive within five to eight hours, Chou said, adding that it would draw up plans to boost the revisit rate, as well as the average number of travel days among tourists from these areas.
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