Cross strait tickets cost less via HK, Macau

Although direct charter flights across the Taiwan Strait on weekends were launched on July 4, the number of such flights are limited and up to 90 percent of the seats have been booked by Taiwanese businessmen investing in mainland China.

Accordingly, the flight ticket fares for direct charter flights are higher than those for indirect flights. The group round-trip ticket for the Taipei-Shanghai flight, for instance, will cost NT$13,000, compared to the fare of NT$11,000 for the indirect flight from Taipei to Shanghai with a stopover at Hong Kong or Macau.

The government liberalized direct visits to Taiwan by mainland Chinese tourists on July 4, and a total of 9,589 mainlanders have visited the island in the first five weeks, as of Aug. 19, translating into an average of 266 inbound Chinese tourists per day, far from the target of 1,000.

A Tourism Bureau official attributed the poor number partly to the fact that China’s state-run enterprises banned their employees from traveling abroad during the Beijing Olympic Games running Aug. 8 through 24, and partly to the fact that some provincial and city governments in China prohibited their citizens from going to Taiwan via Hong Kong and Macao during the Olympic Games period.

As the aforementioned restrictions are expected to be lifted after the Olympic Games, the number of inbound tourists from China is expected to pick up significantly, the official said.

In related news, travel agencies operating on the outlying island of Kinmen expressed welcome yesterday to President Ma Ying-jeou’s promise made the day before to offer landing visas or multiple visas to Chinese visitors to Kinmen.

“The travel incentives represent a shot in the arm for all the tourism operators in Kinmen,” said Yang Tsai-ping, chief secretary of the Kinmen Association of Travel Agents.

President Ma said in his speech delivered in Kinmen Sunday that to accelerate Kinmen’s economic development and facilitate Chinese tourists’ traveling to Kinmen, the government is planning to offer landing visas or multiple visas to Chinese visitors to Kinmen.

Yang said seeking to host more Chinese tourists to Kinmen — which lies closer to Xiamen in China’s southeastern Fujian province than to Taiwan proper — has been the top goal of Kinmen travel agents since 2004 when residents of Kinmen and Fujian province were allowed to begin tourism exchanges via the “mini three links.”

However, Yang pointed out, only 2,729 Chinese tourist groups, or 58,214 people, traveled to Kinmen from Fujian over the past four years between Dec. 7, 2004 and July 31, 2008 — a figure far lower than originally expected.

Yang attributed the low number mainly to the fact that paperwork is too much troublesome and time-consuming for potential Chinese tourists.

He said Ma’s promise Sunday is greatly welcomed, given that if the entry and exit restrictions involving the “mini three links” are removed, Kinmen would be in a much better position to attract tourists from Xiamen, which sees the entry and exit of an average of 20 million people a year.

According to Yang, China currently allows only residents from Fujian Province to visit Kinmen for sightseeing trips, but it has been considering relaxing the restriction to allow residents from 13 other cities and provinces to visit Kinmen via the “mini three links” should Taiwan begin offering landing visas to Chinese visitors.

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