In a bid to restore the flow of foreign visitors to its shores, Taiwan will in May offer digital smartcards stored with NT$5,000 (S$218) or vouchers of the same value for hotel stays to offset some travellers’ expenses.
The Taiwan Tourism Bureau’s Singapore office said on Monday that 500,000 foreign visitors will receive the vouchers or cards through a lucky draw system when they enter Taiwan at any of the four participating airports on the island starting from noon on May 1.
Tourists will have to pre-register for the draw at least one day before they arrive at either the Taoyuan or Songshan airports that serve capital Taipei, or the Taichung and Kaohsiung international airports.
According to a tourism bureau official, tourists intending to participate will receive a designated QR code after they register at 5000.taiwan.net.tw, which went live on Friday.
The QR code will serve as their lucky draw coupon, which travellers will have to scan at the airport’s arrival hall to find out if they are one of 500,000 winners.
Prize winners can then choose to receive either vouchers to offset some of their accommodation costs or a smartcard, both valued at NT$5,000.
Those who opt for the vouchers, which come in denominations of NT$1,000, can use them at more than 450 participating hotels islandwide.
The smartcards will be variants of Taiwan’s EasyCard (you you ka in Mandarin) or iPass (yi ka tong), the equivalents of Singapore’s ez-link card, that travellers can use for public transport, shopping and dining.
A spokesman for the tourism bureau said 250,000 vouchers have been allocated for 2023, leaving 150,000 more to be won in 2024 and the remaining 100,000 for 2025. The promotion will end by June 30, 2025, or when the last voucher has been given out that year.
Visitors on cruises and agency-arranged tours are not eligible for these vouchers.
Local and foreign tour agencies, however, will be able to access subsidies up to NT$50,000 (S$2,180) provided by the tourism bureau when they bring groups who stay for at least two nights in Taiwan.
Tour agency CTC Travel said in response to queries from The Straits Times on Wednesday it was looking into giving “perks” to travellers booking a Taiwan tour in the form of discounts and travel insurance, but was waiting for more concrete details on implementation from the tourism bureau.
The tourism financial incentives were approved on March 24 as part of the government’s NT$380 billion post-pandemic economic recovery package, said Taiwan’s Ministry of Transportation and Communications on April 18.
The island ushered in the first wave of revenge travellers after its post-pandemic border opening in October 2022.
Taiwan is looking to attract up to six million foreign visitors in 2023, the tourism bureau’s deputy director-general Trust Lin said in March, adding that an estimated one million visitors had arrived in the first three months of the year.
In the three years before the pandemic, Taiwan averaged about 11.2 million overseas visitors a year, but those numbers plummeted to around 1.38 million in 2020, 141,000 in 2021 and 895,000 last year, according to The Taipei Times.
Taiwan has been a popular tourist destination for travellers from Singapore, with 460,000 registered visitors to the island in 2019, before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mr Kevin Tay, 32, who spent seven days with his family on the island in December, said Taiwan is always on his list of places to visit.
“If the claim process for the vouchers is simple, I would definitely be swayed by the incentives,” said the businessman, who stayed at a resort in Hsinchu during his last trip.
Mr Joseph Cheng, director of the Taiwan Tourism Bureau’s Singapore office, said on Monday that tourism receipts in 2023 have been encouraging.
“The number of tourists to Taiwan in January and February has exceeded 50 per cent of the same period in 2019, so the overall situation is good,” he told The Straits Times.
He added that the bureau was aiming for around 230,000 visitors from Singapore in 2023, about half of 2019’s numbers.