Tourism to Taiwan is growing at a pace of 1 million tourist visits a year. Taiwan saw 9.81 million foreign tourist arrivals between January 1st and Tuesday. That’s up from about 8.01 million last year.
The number of Chinese visitors doubled from last year. This year saw over 1,178,000 Mainland visitors traveling on their own, up from 520,000 last year. Chinese tourists traveling with a group numbered over 2 million this year, up from 1.68 million last year.
National Immigration Agency Deputy Director Zhang Chi spoke on Wednesday about the growth of tourism in 2014.
"Visitors from overseas already number more than 9.81 million. Foreigners were over 4.63 million. Over 3.93 million have come from Mainland China and over 1.22 million from Hong Kong and Macau," said Zhang.
Zhang said quite a few mainlanders have come to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Taiwan. There’s a daily quota of about 3,000 Chinese tourists traveling alone, but December 30 saw 4,200 Chinese visiting Taiwan on their own for the holiday.
The number of tourists visiting Taiwan has increased by 1 million annually for the past four years. The UN World Tourism Organization says that the 26.7% increase in the rate of tourist visits during the first half of the year was the fastest in the world.