TAA Secretary-General Roget Hsu made the appeal during an interview with reporters on the sidelines of a world tourism conference being held in Taipei under the auspices of the Cabinet-level Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission.

After the government launched its plan to double the number of tourist arrivals in September 2002, the number of foreign tourist arrivals reached only a little over 3.37 million last year, far lower than the targeted number of 5 million, Hsu said.

For his part, Lee Shao-pin, secretary-general of the Hotel Association of the Republic of China, said there are plenty of emerging tourism products worthy of promotion to attract foreign tourists to Taiwan, such as medical tourism, learning Chinese tourism and long-stay tourism targeting retired Japanese.

According to statistics released by the Council for Economic Planning and Development, the output value of Taiwan’s tourist service sector accounted for an average 2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product during the 2002-2005 period, lower than the global tourism’s 3.6 percent as a ratio of the world’s GDP.

Meanwhile, tallies compiled by the Central Bank of China indicate that Taiwan’s travel-related revenues hit around US$5.1 billion in 2006, while travel related expenditures amounted to around US$8.75 billion, leaving a deficit of US$3.65 billion, which shows there is ample room for growth in the domestic tourism market.

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