Kagawa, Japan, July 1 (CNA) The participants at an annual Taiwan-Japan tourism forum, which opened in the Japanese prefecture of Kagawa on Thursday, have agreed to work toward increasing the number of visitors traveling between the two countries to at least 7 million by 2020.
In 2016 the number of Japanese visitors to Taiwan was 1.9 million, an annual increase of 16.5 percent, according to statistics presented at the 2017 Taiwan-Japan Tourism Summit Forum.
Meanwhile, the number of Taiwanese visitors to Japan was 4.3 million, up 13.1 percent from the previous year, the organizers of the four-day forum said.
In total, 6.2 million visitors traveled between Japan and Taiwan last year, meeting the goal set at the 2016 Taiwan-Japan Tourism Summit Forum that was held in Yilan County in Taiwan, according to the data.
The new goal is to increase the number of visitors between the two countries to at 7 million by 2020, the participants said.
The annual Taiwan-Japan Tourism Summit Forum, first held in Taipei in 2008, is rotated between the two countries, with tourism officials and representatives of the industry meeting to hold discussions.
This year, the Taiwan delegation included Tourism Bureau Director-General Chou Yung-hui, Taiwan's Representative to Japan Frank Hsieh, Taiwan Visitors Association Chairwoman Yeh Chu-lan, and Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung.
At the Kagawa forum, which was attended by more than 200 people, Taichung City in central Taiwan was selected to host the 2018 forum.
In a briefing about his city and its preparations to host the 2018 World Flora Exposition, Lin said he hoped the two events would help boost the number of Japanese visitors to Taiwan by 1 million next year.
