News
China-Taiwan frictions adds to Korea-Japan
August 2nd 2019
Chinese individuals can no longer visit Taiwan. Read More »
Two of Asia’s largest travel markets are seeing declines due to political spats. China on Wednesday stopped approving its citizens to travel to Taiwan individually, following recent months where visas were sporadically denied. In a second market, between Korea and Japan, Korean carriers further decreased capacity.
China stopped issuing permission on August 1, allowing those with prior permits to continue their trip plans. The ban covers individual travellers and not those travelling in groups. Individual travellers are typically better for the economy, and Taiwan in the past has had local outrage about group tourism. China has permitted individual visitors to Taiwan since 2011.
News articles cited prospective mainland tourists to Taiwan who still thought positively of travelling to Taiwan. This contrasts to the Korea-Japan market where there is no official prohibition but instead Koreans electing not to travel to Japan.
Airlines are taking further action, with LCC t’way reducing additional routes while Asiana Airlines will down-gauge some flights without suspending any routes. Korean Air is suspending a single route, Busan-Sapporo, while Japan Airlines (JAL) noted no decrease in demand. JAL is the smallest full-service airline in the market, and its passengers are mostly Japanese. In recent months before the political and trade spat, Japanese visitors to Korea had been increasing while Korean visitors to Japan decreased. This likely reflects a swing in the yen-won exchange rate.
