Taiwan is embarked into a boom of its tourism industry thanks to the rapid growth of tourist arrivals from Mainland China. The Island could see total arrivals from the Mainland being multiply by ten until 2016.
TAIPEI- Simplifying travel conditions for Mainland Chinese into Taiwan has revolutionized tourism to Taiwan (or Chinese Taipei as it used by China PRC). With the first flights taking place in 2008 before to see regular schedules flights from August 2009. After a year, Taiwan recorded already 1.6 million Mainlanders in 2010. In 2011, with the partial authorization of individual Mainland Chinese to Taiwan, the Island welcomed 1.78 million of Mainlanders, making China the first inbound market for Taiwan. China has now a market share of 29.3% of all foreign visitors arrivals to the Island. And the growth continues unabated this year: Over 1.3 million mainland tourists visited Taiwan during the first half of 2012, up 50.7% year on year.
Since 2008, more than three million Mainlanders already visited Taiwan spending US$ 5 billion. Taipei and the National Palace Museum –which hosts some of the most precious art pieces from the Forbidden City from Beijing- are on top of any Mainlander’s visit.
Officials are ecstatic about the future of tourism across the Taiwan Straits. At a meeting in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second largest city in the South, officials evocated the fact that tourists travelling across the Taiwan Straits is likely to reach 13 million in 2016 and 20 million by 2020. Shao Qiwei, president of the Beijing-based Association for Tourism Exchange Across the Taiwan Straits, gave the figures while meeting Wu Po-hsiung, honorary chairman of the Kuomintang Party.
Shao said that the prospect for cross-Strait tourism is promising thanks to the existing cooperation and working mechanism between the mainland and the island.
(Source: Xinhua)
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
