half of 2007, according to the latest travel survey by MasterCard. While the first half of the year saw some 4.38 million international travelers from Taiwan, this number will increase in the second half to an estimated 4.6 million, the MasterCard findings said.
In terms of business travel, Singapore and Thailand were the overall top destinations for all travelers in the Asia Pacific region, MasterCard said. Taiwanese businessmen’s top destination, meanwhile, was mainland China, followed by Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Australia, it said.
In the past 12 months, Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore were the top three destinations for leisure travel, followed by New Zealand, China, Malaysia and Taiwan, according to survey results.
MasterCard’s travel survey was conducted in 13 different markets and gathered a total of 5,407 responses between May 2 and May 31, using randomly-chosen subjects.
Statistics by the Tourism Bureau, meanwhile, puts the number of people traveling outside Taiwan in the first half at 4.42 million, which translates into a 4.8 percent increase compared to the same period last year.
During this period, Taiwanese travelers’ top destination was Hong Kong, with 1.48 million. Japan was the destination with the greatest increase of travelers from Taiwan with 630,500, which constitutes a 5.6 percent increase compared to last year.
