Shrinking mainland tourism hits Taiwan country hard

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Yu Huei-li, owner of Life Hotel in Taiwan’s Taitung County, sips coffee and waits for tourists to arrive and check into the hotel.

 
“Business is slow these days,” she said.

 
Despite Yu’s hotel being located in the centre of a tourist area in southeast of Taiwan business has been lacklustre even during peak travel seasons.

 
“During the Dragon Boat Festival, few tourists stayed at my hotel,” Yu said. “There were less group tours from the mainland.”

 
Mainland tourism has declined amid cold cross-strait relations. A few years ago, it was a completely different picture.

 
“At that time, cross-strait relations were good, and tourism was blooming,” Yu said. “The hotels here were fully booked in advance, and our guests had to be transferred to other hotels simply because there were not enough vacant rooms.”

 
The lull followed the election of Taiwan’s new leader Tsai Ing-wen, who assumed office in 2016. Tsai has refused to adhere to the 1992 Consensus, angering people on both sides of the Strait.

 
Weng Piao-piao, a tour bus driver in Taitung, said that a few years ago, his bus was full every day due to the huge number of mainland tourists.

 
“Now I need to wait a long time to find enough tourists,” Weng said.

 
According to a media report, the tourism industry in Taitung has suffered the most, as the county is “quite remote” and “travel expenses are much higher” than other tourist destinations such as Taipei and Kaohsiung. Hotel room bookings are 20 to 30 percent lower in the county than previous years, according to the report.

 
Not only Taitung, other prominent tourist locations, such as Sun Moon Lake, are also suffering similar losses.

 
Because of the decreasing number of mainland visitors, some famous hotel brands, including the Westin Taipei, have announced closure.

 
“The Westin Taipei was the first to do so, but definitely not the last,” said Liu Chi-chiang, president of Les Suites hotel chain in Taiwan. Liu said that without mainland tourists, many businesses in the sector will be forced to close in the near future.

 
According to local authorities, the number of mainland tourist to Taiwan was more than 4.18 million in 2015. But after Tsai was elected, the number dropped significantly to less than 2.74 million last year, down more than 30 percent.

 
Last year, foreign exchange earnings from tourism totaled 374.9 billion new Taiwan dollars (about 12.31 billion U.S. dollars), down 13.3 percent from 2016.

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