In Prime Minister Yu Shyi-kun's Challenge 2008-The Six-Year National Development Plan, there is one item called the "Program for Increasing Tourism." The target of this plan is to increase the number of tourists visiting Taiwan to five million visits per year within the next five years. That our government can focus on developing a "non-smokestack industry" is heartening, however I feel that touting the tourist industry as a cure for Taiwan's current economic ills is going too far.

I believe there are three ways we can view tourism. The first view is that tourism is international promotion, which allows Taiwan to gain recognition, raise international visibility and promote international friendship, and even allows for improving contacts between Taiwan and the mainland. The second view is that tourism needs depth and cultural integration. The third view is what our government hopes: that tourism can save our prosperity.

Presently there is a draft of our government organization law that proposes to move the Tourism Bureau from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to the Ministry of Economics. This also reflects an "economic rescue" mode of thinking. However it's still far removed from the tourism departments of other countries, such as Singapore's Tourist Promotion Board, which is a cross-departmental organization, or the Philippines, whose tourism department is on a ministerial level, or Thailand and Indonesia, which have tourism departments immediately under the central government.

Since 1994 when Taiwan initiated visa-free entry for the citizens of 12 countries, tourism has grown rapidly. Even with last year's terrible economy and a negative one percent growth in entries into Taiwan, Taiwan still had 2,600,000 visits. Although business travel declined, tourist visits actually grew by 13.8%. However after close analysis, the actual number of tourists was probably around 1,000,000 visits, with the rest due to business travel or other reasons.

There are many instances where our tourism and leisure facilities lack sufficient economic efficiency. For example, some medium-sized cities stress the need to build athletic parks, such as a special-event dome that would serve as a project to promote tourism. But let me ask you, after spending all that money will this facility always be able to earn sufficient economic returns? Is there a long term commercial opportunity?

Let's go back ten years, and look at the example of Ilan, a city that took tourism and made it a focal point for their economic development. Ilan's athletic park and the Tongshan River area are certainly successful at attracting large crowds each year for boat races and the children's toy festival. Yet how will that solve the problem of where to go on weekends? How will it lower the unemployment rate? That's the key, I'm afraid, for overall growth.

The long and narrow east coast is a case where developing tourism is one of the few feasible choices. Yet even though the combined population of Hualian and Taitung is less than 500,000 we want to spend NT$200 billion to construct an expressway from Taipei directly to Hualian. Is this type of resource allocation reasonable? Why not first reorganize the railroad and make sure that there are direct trains to the east coast available every hour? Why not first solve the current problem of not having enough train tickets to meet weekend demand?

We can use a compass to draw circles on a map to estimate where our tourists come from. Areas within a one-hour flight will produce more tourists. For this reason, we continue to press for granting original Hong Kong residents visa-free treatment, so they can come to Taiwan whenever they wish. We have citizens who hold long-term Hong Kong visas; can't we go to Hong Kong whenever we please? On the weekends we go there to shop and to eat in the restaurants, and that's all you need.

If you look at the second circle, within three hours flight time of Taiwan, you will see Japan, Korea, mainland China, Macao, Singapore, and so on. Of these countries, Singapore was granted visa-free treatment in May of last year. I traveled to Singapore last November to promote this change and in December there was an immediate 38% increase in Singaporeans coming to Taiwan. Korea already grants visa-free treatment for Taiwan citizens, but we are not yet willing to give Koreans the same treatment. And don't even mention the mainland, which is still a restricted area.

I always emphasize that there are several steps for tourism development. The first is that our government must position tourism. If we recognize that tourism is an important policy that strengthens our relationship with neighboring countries, then our government must first relax restrictions on visas. This is like opening a faucet and connecting the water pipes before the water can come in. Otherwise, if we say we want to increase tourism on the one hand, and don't open the faucet on the other, isn't that self-defeating?

Looking to the future I feel there are still several markets worth developing. First is the system of international conference centers. Twenty years ago, we noticed this market at the same time as Singapore, yet except for facilities, we had no promotion plan or budget. Yet today Singapore, Hong Kong, even Thailand all have comprehensive plans. Singapore has built a second facility, and on average in one year there are over 1,000 conferences held there.

Actually, businesses like professional conference organizing are already quite mature. Each country's government provides venue rental discounts, traffic control, and other complementary services. Over a thousand people attend each conference, spending large amounts of money on restaurants, hotels, entertaining, etc.

When people from other countries come to Taiwan it provides a huge boost to Taiwan's visibility and international connections. For example, over the past few years Taiwan has hosted major conferences on technology and publishing. All those invited were internationally recognized VIPs, people who normally would not travel to Taiwan. But this requires that our government liberalize visas and air routes and make it easier to travel to Taiwan.

Also worth developing is the youth travel market. The growth in international youth exchange activities and the value of this market are quite surprising. Every country's government has service mechanisms that address this market, yet we are still lacking coordination in this regard.

For example, every major area in Taiwan has a China Youth Corps activity center. Why not open these to international students and allow them to rent rooms-perhaps for US$10 a night? For another example, every year how many hundreds of thousands of young Japanese travel on school breaks? These young Japanese would love the opportunity to come to Taiwan for student exchanges, but Taiwan's schools think it's a waste of time and won't initiate the exchange. It will take a lot of persuasion to get schools to cooperate. In addition, we need to raise our citizens' level of English and the level of friendly acceptance of foreigners.

Of course, tourism is divided into two large pieces of pie. The largest is actually domestic tourism. This piece needs to be carefully analyzed, designed and cultivated.

Presently, Taiwan's county governments are spending a lot of money on tourism activities. Yet many of these activities and facilities are not targeted by category. The result is that they are used by everyone regardless of age or gender, which takes some of the enjoyment out of these leisure time activities. Recently, the grand opening of The Lalu, Sun Moon Lake, has attracted everyone's attention. This is due not only to the five-star hotel facilities, but more importantly to the professional way they have integrated with the natural scenic spaces and landscape design. It is worth studying.

Before we start hoping that tourism can save prosperity, Taiwan's tourism operators must first help themselves. Most have gone deeply into debt trying to run their operations.

Our government must take concrete measures-from policy, to packaging, to promotion-with objectives determined by professionals and government, objectives which will not change no matter who is in power. In this way perhaps Taiwan's tourism industry will have hope for success.