TAIPEI: Nearly 4.4 million overseas residents visited Taiwan in 2009, a record high that surpassed the government target of 4.1 million by 14.3 percent, the Tourism Bureau reported yesterday.

Some 2.29 million people, or 52.3 percent of the total, came to Taiwan for tourism, an increase of 29.4 percent from a year earlier, indicating that Taiwan is making progress toward achieving its goal of transforming itself into a tourist destination for overseas visitors, the bureau said.

Japan remained the largest source of overseas arrivals, but the number of Japanese visiting Taiwan fell 7.92 percent in 2009 to 1,000,661. Japanese tourist numbers, however, were down by only 1.76 percent.

The tourism bureau attributed the decline to weak outbound travel among Japanese over the past year. Japan Tourism Marketing Co estimates that the number of outbound Japanese travelers fell 3.8 percent in 2009.

Mainland residents formed the second largest group of overseas visitors to Taiwan, with 972,213 visitors, including 606,174 tourists, according to the bureau.

It said the number of mainland tourists coming to Taiwan has increased steadily after Taiwan opened its doors wider to mainland tour groups in July 2008.

Visitor arrivals from Hong Kong and Macao also posted impressive growth last year, the bureau said. A total of 718,806 residents of the two cities visited Taiwan in 2009, 16.19 percent more than in 2008, making them the third largest source of Taiwan's visitor arrivals.

It is also worth noting that the number of South Korean visitors to Taiwan in December surged by 32.14 percent from November, reversing the negative growth seen over the previous 13 months, the bureau said.

China Daily/CNA

(HK Edition 01/13/2010 page2)