BEIJING: Chinese mainlanders made 1.212 million tourist visits to Taiwan since the island lifted a ban on mainland tourists in June 2008, the mainland-based Cross-Strait Tourism Exchange Association (CTEA) said in a statement Tuesday.
The first group of mainland tourists arrived in Taiwan in July 2008. And since then, the mainland has become the second largest tourist source for Taiwan after Japan.
The island attracted 606,000 mainland tourists in 2009 and 35,000 during the week-long Chinese New Year holiday in February, according to the CTEA.
The momentum is likely to continue, as the mainland and Taiwan will open tourism representative offices on each other's side of the Taiwan Strait in May, the first such organizations since 1949.
The CTEA is scheduled to set up its Taipei office on May 7, three days after the Taiwan-based Taiwan Strait Tourism Association establishes its Beijing office on May 4.
