The government aims to attract 6 million international tourists next year after easing COVID-19 border controls, Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) told legislators in Taipei yesterday.
At a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) asked Wang whether his ministry could still reach its goal of attracting 16 million international visitors per year to Taiwan by 2030.
Wang said the government would reach its goal of 700,000 international tourists by the end of this year.
Photo: CNA
“For next year, we aim to have 6 million international tourists,” he said. “It would take two to three years for the tourism industry to recover to pre-pandemic levels, but we should have no problem reaching our goal set for 2030.”
Taiwan has since Oct. 13 waived a quarantine requirement for all inbound travelers. The government on Saturday is to lift a cap on inbound travelers.
Hung and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Su-yueh (陳素月) said that reopening borders has only allowed Taiwanese to travel abroad more freely, but has not attracted international tourists to Taiwan.
In October, 172,319 Taiwanese traveled overseas, while 903,206 international tourists arrived, they said, citing statistics from the National Immigration Agency.
Meanwhile, 36,000 Taiwanese traveled to Japan in October, while 9,625 Japanese visited Taiwan, they said.
A record-high 11.86 million foreign tourists visited Taiwan in 2019, with 2.71 million coming from China, 2.16 million from Japan, and 1.75 million from Hong Kong and Macau, Tourism Bureau data showed.
“In the post-pandemic era, we will focus on attracting tourists from Japan, South Korea and nations targeted by the government’s New Southbound Policy,” Wang said.
Tourism Bureau Director-General Chang Shi-chung (張錫聰) acknowledged that there is a tourism deficit.
“Like other countries, Taiwan is experiencing a surge of outbound travelers since the borders were reopened on Oct. 13. However, the same phenomenon in other countries occurred earlier because their borders opened in the first half of this year,” Chang said.
He told legislators that the surge this year in outbound travelers worldwide did not last long due to inflation, which has caused global travel costs to rise dramatically.
“Some tourists, particularly those from Japan, remain concerned about COVID-19 outbreaks in other countries,” he said.
Even though Japan also reopened its borders in October, only about 300,000 Japanese have traveled overseas each month so far, Chang said, adding that Japan has a population of about 125 million.
About 60 percent of Taiwanese have passports, while only one-quarter of Japanese do, he said.
The Tourism Bureau said it plans to roll out a series of incentives to attract individual and group tourists.
These include a voucher for a box of Taiwanese fresh fruit, a five-day 4G SIM card and a one-way ticket on the Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, it said.
International travelers heading to destinations in central and southern Taiwan can buy two high-speed rail tickets for the price of one, it added.
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