BEIJING/Shanghai - More mainland tourists are expected to visit Taiwan during the upcomingone-week National Day holiday from Oct 1, giving a boost to the island's tourism, which has nothad as many individual mainland tourists as expected.
Ctrip.com, one of China's leading online travel services, said in a news release the number ofindividual tourists to the island is expected to double during the Golden Week holiday.
The company also estimates that visitors from the mainland will significantly increase in thefourth quarter, which is normally regarded as the best season to travel in the island.
"I chose to visit Taiwan because the vacation is long enough for such a trip," said Tang Yu, a25-year-old Shanghai resident. "I would like to explore the island on an individual basis, as theexperience will be different from following a tour-group schedule."
In late June, a pilot tourism program was agreed by both sides of the Straits, which allowedmainland tourists to visit the island as individuals rather than in tour groups, although thenumber is capped at 500 a day.
However, mainland tourists have so far been less enthusiastic than expected.
Statistics from the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association show that in the first month after the newpolicy took effect only 633 individual tourists visited Taiwan.
"Business in the past two months has not been as good as we expected," said Huang Te-chen,general manger of China Travel Services, a Taiwan travel agency.
"More than half of the individual visitors from the mainland were not really here for sightseeingbut visiting relatives or friends."
Fan Liqing, a spokeswoman for the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, said on Wednesdaythat there are several reasons for the lukewarm market.
The new tourism policy still needs time to influence the market and the authorities are trying tosimplify the application for individuals, which many consider too "complicated", Fan said.
In contrast to the sluggish individual tour market, group visits to the island have remained verypopular.
According to the office, 770,000 mainland tourists visited Taiwan in tour groups in the first eightmonths this year, and in August alone, 90,600 tourists made group trips, up 17.6 percent onthe number last year.
"The 10 groups for Taiwan during the National Day holiday were fully booked in the middle ofAugust," said Cao Lu of the Taiwan tours department for Shanghai Airlines Tours.
Last year, 1.66 million tourists from the mainland visited Taiwan.
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