Under the cooperation of the travel industry and the government departments, the number of overseas visitors to Taiwan reached 10 million on Sunday night (Dec. 2). It’s the fourth year in a row that the number of visitors to Taiwan has surpassed 10 million. This year, the goal was reached two weeks ahead of schedule. Under a competitive international tourism environment, Taiwan has been tapping into different tourism markets and diversifying its sources of tourists. According to government statistics, nearly 1 in four visitors came from the 18 countries covered by Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy, which seeks to expand tourism and other links with countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia as well as Australia and New Zealand. The fastest growth came from tourists from the Philippines and Vietnam, which grew by more than 50% and 30% respectively compared to last year. Overall, the growth in tourists is strong and relied on the government to build a friendly tourism environment, and industry to actively improve the quality of tourism, so that Taiwan can really stabilize the number of visitors. This shows Taiwan’s efforts to develop multi-source markets has achieved results.

The Tourism Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communications pointed out that the top five source markets for Taiwanese tourists in the past four years include: mainland China, Japan, Hong Kong, Macao, South Korea, and the United States. Visitors from those markets accounted for more than 70% of the total number of visitors to Taiwan, of which the Japanese market is expected to exceed 2 million by the end of this year. Although the Korean market was affected by the Hualien earthquake in eastern Taiwan from January to October, it is expected to maintain the million-person scale this year. As the number of visitors from the 18 nations covered by the New Southbound Policy can exceed 2.5 million this year, all of these source markets added together will account for more than 95% of the total number of passengers coming to Taiwan.

Under the Tourism 2020 strategy, the Tourism Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications will market Taiwan’s tourism resources under an annual theme. It will also create a friendlier environment and make efforts to develop diverse sources of international tourists by developing a multi-market approach and promoting experience-filled tourism and such sightseeing strategies. With the joint efforts of the tourism industry this year, the performance of all major source markets has been outstanding. The growth rate in Southeast Asian market has grown by nearly 20% and the growth rate in the long-haul markets of Canada and Europe have been maintained at 6~16%, proving that Taiwan’s tourism resources are indeed able to attract different source markets. This also gives us more confidence to open up more potential markets and make the market structure more diverse.

We are looking forward to launching our tourism marketing to the world in 2019. In the face of fierce competition for tourists from neighboring countries, Taiwan’s tourism will fully integrate with local industries in the hope of using Taiwan’s various small towns to attract tourists to have an in-depth travel experience in local areas and experience the most local Taiwanese style.