Mainland tourists to Taiwan up 34% for holiday

BEIJING - More than 57,000 Chinese mainland tourists visited Taiwan during the seven-day Spring Festival holiday, up 34.31 percent from last year's holiday, mainland authorities said Wednesday.

A total of 57,797 mainland tourists visited Taiwan between Feb 9 and 15, mainland authorities said.

Among them, 41,984 traveled in tour groups, an increase of 8.59 percent, while the number of individual tourists rocketed by 262.02 percent to 15,813, according to the authorities.

Taiwan first allowed mainlanders to visit the island in groups in July 2008 and opened the door to individual tourists from mainland cities on June 28, 2011. The number of mainland tourists visiting Taiwan has grown robustly since then.

Statistics from Taiwan authorities show that more than 2.58 million people from the mainland visited Taiwan in 2012, including 1.78 million in groups, an increase of 46 percent year-on-year.