Taiwan has revised its 2024 estimates for international tourist visits, lowering expectations. Between January and August, fewer than five million foreign visitors arrived, with the year-end total forecasted to reach only about eight million.
According to Taiwan News on Thursday, October 24, 2024, Radio Taiwan International reported that tourism executives originally set a target of 12 million visitors for this year. This was higher than the 11 million annual visitors Taiwan received before the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, natural disasters—including the Hualien earthquake and Typhoons Gaemi and Krathon on April 3—slashed tourist numbers. Earlier in the year, monthly arrivals were promising, with 810,000 visitors, but that dropped to 610,000 following the earthquake.
From May to July, the number of arrivals didn’t reach 600,000 per month. In August, there was a slight recovery to 616,000, bringing the total for the first eight months to 4.96 million.
Huang Jeng-tsung, head of the tourism department at Providence University, predicted that if this trend continues over the last four months of 2024, the total visitor count will only reach about eight million by the year’s end.
Besides natural disasters, Taiwan’s tourism numbers are also impacted by China’s ban on mass tourism to the island. Ximending remains a popular destination for international travelers, but the Tourism Bureau admitted that this year’s goal of 10 million international visitors is unlikely, with an estimate closer to under eight million. Taiwan still banks on its food tourism and the warm hospitality of locals to attract visitors.
Hong Kong and Macau contributed the most visitors with over 14.9 million, followed by Japan with 1.32 million, and South Korea with one million, according to the Tourism Bureau.