Source: Want China Times 【Journalist Sin-Tong Li/Taipei Report】10-22-2013 at 02:03

Mainland Chinese tourists on self-guided tours to Taiwan are all the rage. The Vice President of Ctrip.com, Yong He, pointed out in the 2013 Tourism Forum on October 21, 2013 that he was in contact with Taiwan's tourism operators. Many of them believed that implementation of China's tourism law would have some impact on group tours to Taiwan. However, they forecasted that self-guided tourists would grow to 50 percent, and possibly even attaining three-digit growth.
On the afternoon of October 21, under the title of "Preparations for the Self-guided Tourism Trend" the 2013 Tourism Forum invited Yong He to speak about the "Self-Guided Tourism Market Outlook". He noted that 2013 was the year that self-guided tourism was booming.

Domestic and overseas self-guided tours are a hot ticket
He said that in the first half of this year the number of people who went on a tour through the service of mainland China's travel agencies had increased by more than 10 percent compared with the same period last year. The number of people on group tours had dropped at least 10 percent while those who went on self-guided tours had increased considerably. Take Taiwan as an example; this past April when he took a train from Tainan to a tourist attraction, he had experienced Taiwan's good public service. Moreover, the tickets for Taiwan's scenic spots were inexpensive. On the contrary, tickets for mainland China's scenic spots were on the expensive side, which affected self-guided tourists' visiting inclinations.
In recent years self-guided tours have been the roaring trend in mainland China. The top ten domestic destinations in mainland China for self-guided tours are based on leisure vacations. The top three destinations are Sanya, Xiamen and Lijiang followed by Jiuzhaigou, Guilin, Beijing, Chengdu, Qingdao, Xi'an and Hangzhou. As for tourist characteristics, females account for about 55%.The majority of tourists are 23 to 45 years old. Presently the mainland Chinese are able to set out from 60 cities in mainland China to anywhere in the world for self-guided tours. This year it is expected that self-guided touring will still be all the rage, whether it is domestic or international.

Planning by spending power, accessing villages and towns
The chairman of the Taiwan Visitors Association, Syue-Lao Jhang commented that self-guided tourists could arrange their itineraries according to their spending power. They could better access Taiwan's villages and towns which was a plus for promoting regionalization and diversification as well as youth travel and get-away tours.
He remarked that presently cross-strait direct flights had been increased to 670 per week. The modes of cross-strait transportation had been expanded from air to sea including direct ferries, which offered more convenient ways for cross-strait contact and exchange.