Taiwan recorded 3.93 million arrivals from China in 2014, a 78.6% y-o-y increase. Independent visitor arrivals increased most significantly at 125% y-o-y to top 1.17 million while tour group visitor number was up 23% to 2.07 million.
The Taiwan Tourism Bureau said the number of independent travelers has increased to more than half of that of group visitors and the proportion of independent visitors will continue to increase this year. Taiwan limits the number of Chinese group visitors to 5,000 per day but the number of cities open to independent visitors and number of visitors per day are likely to be further relaxed. In 2013, Taiwan received 520,000 independent visitors and 1.68 million group visitors from China.
Meanwhile, the number of Taiwanese visitors to China is also growing and likely to boost the flow of tourism traffic across the strait to more than 10 million this year. In the first 11 months last year, China received 4.87 million visitors from Taiwan, up 2.4% y-o-y, accordingly to the National Tourism Administration of China.(Translation by David)
