TAIPEI, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- More than 10,000 mainland tourists are expected
to visit Taiwan during the Spring Festival holiday, according to the island's
tourism department.
Yao Ta Kuang, a senior official of the Taiwan Travel Agent Association,
said so far, Taiwan tour operators had received more than 10,000 travel
applications from mainland residents.
Taiwan travel agencies estimated that during Taiwan's nine-day Lunar New
Year holiday, an average of more than 1,000 mainland tourists a day will visit,
with the total to exceed 10,000.
This year, the Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, falls on Jan.
26.
Yao said that if hotels near tourist attractions were full, mainland
tourists might be booked into urban hotels and taken by high-speed rail to
various sites, instead of sight-seeing buses.
"High-speed railways will increase the operators' costs but save time," Yao
told Xinhua.
Yao said that Taiwan operators had prepared some special activities, such
as a Lunar New Year's Eve get-together at Taipei's famous Fisherman's Wharf.
An official with the Taiwan Tourism Bureau said the bureau and travel
operators will provide mainland tourists with the best services. But he also
worried that with many mainland tourists coming during the holidays, the island
might run short of hotel rooms.
Hotels near major tourist attractions, including Ali Mountain and Sun-Moon
Lake, were almost fully booked, an earlier report quoted Taiwan tourism chief
Janice Lai as saying.
Under an agreement signed June 13 by the mainland-based Association for
Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange
Foundation, mainland tourists were permitted to visit Taiwan starting in July.
Previously, mainland residents could only visit Taiwan for a limited number of
reasons, such as business.
Initially, operators complained of lower-than-expected mainland tourist
visits, but tourism picked up after such joint efforts as increasing the number
of terminals and cross-Straits flights.
