Inbound tourist arrivals to Taiwan surged by one million in 2010

Since the opening of Mainland Chinese tourist arrivals to Taiwan in 2008, the establishment of the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association (TSTA) Beijing Office in 2010, and the launch of direct flights between Taipei’s Songshan Airport and Shanghai’s Hongqiao Airport, these factors contributed to Mainland Chinese tourists surpassing Japanese tourists as the largest source market in 2010. A total of 1.637 million Mainland Chinese visitors came, marking an impressive growth rate of 67.75%.

The Japanese tourist market to Taiwan maintained its record of exceeding one million arrivals annually since 2005, reaching 1.081 million last year. In addition to the launch of direct flights between Taipei’s Songshan Airport and Tokyo’s Haneda Airport in October, which made travel more convenient, several resolutions reached at the "Taiwan-Japan Tourism Summit," such as continued development of educational travel, group incentive travel, sports tourism, and exchanges in history and culture, were also key reasons why the Taiwan-Japan tourism market thrived together. The Korean market grew by 29.38%, the Japanese market by 7.94%, collectively generating over NT$51 billion in tourism revenue for Taiwan.