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By Shelley Shan / Staff reporter
The Executive Yuan should allow at least 1 million Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan per year to boost tourism revenue and maintain peace across the Taiwan Strait, experts said yesterday in a panel discussion hosted by the National Policy Foundation.
Taiwanese made 11.8 million trips abroad last year, with total travel expenditure exceeding NT$713.4 billion (US$21.93 billion), Tourism Administration data showed.
By contrast, international travelers made only 6.48 million visits to Taiwan last year, spending an estimated NT$269.8 billion, the data showed.
Photo: David Chang, EPA-EFE
The tourism revenue deficit between outbound and inbound travelers reached NT$443.6 billion last year, up by NT$71.7 billion from the pre-COVID-19 pandemic level in 2019.
About 11.8 million international tourists arrived in 2019, of which 2.71 million were Chinese, the data showed.
Although the government has set a goal of attracting at least 10 million international tourists this year, Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told lawmakers that it could only draw about 8 million.
Experts attending the discussion hosted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) think tank attributed Taiwan’s widening tourism deficit to a relatively slow recovery from the pandemic as well as the government’s ban on group tours to China and the issuance of a travel alert for China.
Beijing only allows tourists to travel to Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties through group tours and still bans group tours and individual travel to Taiwan proper.
Taiwan does not prohibit individuals from traveling to China.
China was the largest source of overseas travelers in 2019, even though cross-strait relations were strained during former president Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) first term, High Quality of Travel Association chairman Ringo Lee (李奇嶽) said.
“Output value generated by Chinese tourists was two times higher than that of Japanese and South Korean tourists and three times higher than that of Southeast Asian tourists, because the length of their stay was twice as long,” Lee said, adding that the government would have to find tourists from other countries to make up for the deficit.
The Democratic Progressive Party government’s mismanagement of cross-strait relations has further escalated tensions and caused China to launch two large-scale military exercises this year, Lee said, adding that this has become the main reason many international travelers feel Taiwan is not a safe place to visit, in addition to earthquakes and typhoons.
Chinese tourists spent an average of US$250 per day while traveling in Taiwan, which was twice the amount spent by tourists from Japan and South Korea and five times the amount spent by Southeast Asian tourists, Chinese Tourism Management Association chairman Lee Ming-hui (李銘輝) said.
Resuming cross-strait tourism could boost the economy in different localities and create jobs, Lee Ming-hui said.
Lee Ming-hui also criticized the government’s New Southbound Policy, for which a significant amount of subsidies have been budgeted to attract tourists and students from Southeast Asia.
“The subsidies might draw students and tourists from Southeast Asia to study and travel in Taiwan for a short period. However, these subsidy-oriented programs could eventually drain Taiwan’s foreign reserves and are not sustainable,” he said.
Lee Ming-hui questioned how the Tourism Administration calculated international tourist numbers, which he said includes re-entry of foreign nationals already living, studying and working in Taiwan.
The government has set a low bar, considering that Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore all record more than 10 million international visitors each year, he said.
“It would be a national shame if Taiwan cannot have 10 million international tourists per year,” he said.
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