NAN-F-34
Tourists
Taipei, Feb. 9, 2017 (dpa/NAN) Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday showed appreciation to tourists as data revealed that the number of foreign tourists visiting the country hit a higher record since 2016 compared to previous years.
The president took to her twitter and thanked the foreign tourists in nine different languages, saying more people visited Taiwan in 2016 than ever.
She then wrote “Thank you!” in English, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Hindi and simplified Chinese.
Taiwan saw a total of 10.69 million foreign visitors in 2016, a 2.4 per cent year-on-year increase from 2015, according to government statistics released earlier this month.
“Taiwan will make all efforts to promote tourism by diversifying markets and bringing up more innovative practices,” Tsai said.
In 2016, the number of visitors from Thailand alone increased 57 per cent, the statistics showed.
The number of foreign tourists from Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia grew by 34.3 per cent, 23.9 per cent, 10 per cent, and 6.2 per cent, respectively.
The Tourism Bureau attributed the increased numbers of tourists from South-east Asia to Taiwan’s easing of visa restrictions, in November 2015, for some Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.
China was still the largest source of foreign visitors to Taiwan in 2016, with 3.51 million Chinese visitors accounting for 32.9 per cent of the total in spite of a 16.1 per cent decrease from 2015.
The number of visitors from Japan increased 16.5 per cent, with Japanese visitors accounting for 17.7 per cent of the total.
South Korea followed with 880,000 visitors representing 8.3 per cent of the total. (dpa/NAN)
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Edited by Celine-Damilola Oyewole/Grace Yussuf