“Finally, we have good news!” said Rongjuan Shu, a 63-year-old resident of Longyan, Fujian Province. “I have always wanted to visit relatives in Taiwan with my two daughters. It's inconvenient to visit friends and family with a tour group, but individual travel was not open, so the plan has been on hold for three to four years.”
On the 18th, the Cross-Strait Tourism Exchange Association announced the fifth batch of pilot cities for mainland residents' individual travel to Taiwan. Longyan, a city with a large Hakka population, was selected. The other ten cities are Haikou, Hohhot, Lanzhou, Yinchuan, Changzhou, Zhoushan, Huizhou, Weihai, Guilin, and Xuzhou.
Residents of these 11 cities will be able to travel to Taiwan freely starting from the 15th of next month. This brings the total number of pilot cities to 47, covering more than 320 million residents from four municipalities and 24 provinces, accounting for nearly one-quarter of the mainland population.
Mainland China and Taiwan were isolated from each other for 38 years after 1949. For the older generation on the mainland, visiting Taiwan was a dream they didn’t dare to dream.
In July 2008, the mainland opened group tours to Taiwan, making this dream come true. However, as the Taiwan travel market gradually expanded, many people were no longer satisfied with the superficial sightseeing tours. Especially young backpackers and business travelers preferred in-depth trips that they could arrange themselves. Responding to widespread demand, individual travel to Taiwan began on June 28, 2011.
Over the past three years, individual travel has become the new norm for visiting Taiwan. By the end of February this year, there had been a total of 2.1864 million individual visits. Last year alone saw 1.179 million individual travelers, accounting for 37% of all mainland tourists visiting Taiwan.
According to the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association, in the first two months of this year, the daily average of mainland residents traveling to Taiwan in groups was 5,033, while individual travel saw a daily average of 4,554.
"The scale of individual travel to Taiwan is growing rapidly and is catching up to group travel, occupying nearly half of the Taiwan travel market," said Ruizong Yang, Director of the Beijing Office of the Taiwan Tourism Bureau.
“Fishtrip” is a mainland website focused on arranging individual travel to Taiwan. Its business model helps tourists connect with local tourism resources before departure, allowing them to customize their travel routes through the website. This efficient matchmaking has earned the site a good reputation within a year of its launch.
“Business is really good; the only problem now is that the quotas are insufficient and were used up a month ago,” said Na Yao, an employee at Fishtrip.
The expansion of individual travel is also welcomed by Taiwan's hotels, B&Bs, malls, and tourist transportation industries. Compared to tour groups, individual travelers tend to have higher quality and purchasing power, benefiting a broader range of local businesses.
“The advantage of individual travel is that it allows people to walk through Taiwan's streets and alleys, chat with local residents, and experience Taiwan more deeply, fostering natural emotional connections between the two sides,” said Ruizong Yang.
Liu Kezhi, Secretary-General of the Cross-Strait Tourism Exchange Association, agreed. He said that traveling to Taiwan has become an important channel for civil exchanges and a crucial bridge for emotional communication between people on both sides. The association will further enhance the convenience of individual travel, strengthen tourist safety measures, and continuously improve service quality to ensure the healthy development of tourism to Taiwan.