Taiwan welcomed its tenth million arrival at the end of December, pushing the destination to new highs in terms of visitors.

Han Seon Geun from Busan, Korea, landed at Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport and was greeted by a welcome committee led by director general Chou Yung-Hui of the Taiwan Tourism Bureau.

Chou presented Han with an array of gifts including airline tickets and hotel vouchers.

The happy traveller said that this was her first visit to Taiwan and that she had come to spend her honeymoon on the island with her new husband - whom she had married only on the morning of her arrival.

The ten-millionth visitor of the year arrived earlier than in 2015, when the date was December 20th.

Taiwan’s strengthened promotion of tourist markets in north-east Asia and the target countries of the New Southbound Policy is bearing fruit.

The Tourism Bureau indicates that its international promotional efforts in Japan, Korea, and south-east Asia have shown the most significant results, especially among such key groups as study travellers (399 groups in the first eleven months of this year, up 119 per cent from 2015), incentive travellers (296 groups, up 5.3 per cent), and Muslim travellers (up 5.7 per cent).

In the visitor source structure, the mainland Chinese who made up more than 40 per cent of all arrivals in 2015 began plummeting in June and by October had dropped 44.30 per cent.

Mainland Chinese will drop to an estimated 30 per cent of the total this year as political tensions between the two countries remain.

Last year was also a good year for UK arrivals, with the number of British people visiting Taiwan exceeding last year’s figures.

British arrivals in the country remain Taiwan’s largest outbound market in Europe and there is forecast to be a ten per cent growth in visitors from the UK this year.