Over 6oo top tourism officials and professionals from China and Taiwan met at the 18th cross-strait tourism forum in Taipei on Tuesday.
Tourism across the Taiwan Strait has been growing steadily. Deputy Director-General of the Tourism Bureau Chang Shi-chung said last year, over 40,000 Chinese tour groups went on high-quality tours in Taiwan. Since May 2013, Taiwan has been striving to promote higher quality tour experiences in Taiwan.
Last year, there were over 3 million visits from Chinese tourists, which marked a growth of 38% from 2013. Over 1 million of those visits were tourists traveling on their own.
China saw 5,360,000 million visits from Taiwan tourists in 2014, which was 4% more than in 2013.
Chang said he looks forward to seeing cross-strait tourism soar. "I’m sure we’ll see exchanges of 10 million visits very soon. This year we are promoting high quality tourism, theme tours, intelligent tours, and eco-friendly tours. This is not only a strategy. Tourism is a platform to coordinate all sorts of resources and present diverse and broad travel experiences," said Chang.
Beginning April 15, Taiwan will welcome individual tourists from 11 more Chinese cities.