Surveying the cratered landscape of Taiwan's tourism industry

My friend Dom peers out over the ruins of bed and breakfasts strewn across the hills of Miaoli

It's said in the media, so it must be true. A recent iteration:

Since the May inauguration of the new president Tsai Ing-wen from the anti-mainland side of Taiwanese politics, China has turned off the tap. Chinese group tours are down 40 per cent, hitting the central and southern regions of the island hard.

Skipping over the extremely stupid formulation "anti-mainland", let's see how hard hit our island has been.

Although they are not used by the international media in reporting on Taiwan tourism, the government does collect piles of stats on what is happening in the industry on the BuTourism website. The Sept tourist arrivals stats are not out yet, but the number of hotels/room data is out. Let's look at the devastation wrought by the loss of the stingiest, most unremunerative, most widely disliked tourists in Taiwan, Chinese group tourists.

The government collects data on legal and illegal hotels and rooms across Taiwan. Yes, that's right, it knows where all the illegal ones are, it just does nothing. Here are the overall data for January of 2016:

	Estblmnts	rooms	operators
Legal	6153	24840	6805
Illegal	428	2499	462
Total	6581	27339	7267

You know what happened, of course. Catastrophe occurred, we know that because the media has assured us. Here are the September numbers:

	Est	Rooms	Operators
Legal	6863	27743	7881
Illegal	440	2531	468
Total	7303	30274	8349

As anyone can see, the total number of establishments plummeted from 6581 to 7303, the total number of rooms collapsed from 27,339 to 30,274, and the total number of operators fell from 7267 to 8349.

O wait, did I write plummeted, collapsed, fell? Sorry, writing under the influence... of the international media.

I meant, grew, increased, rose. These tour establishment operators are so stupid, they didn't even know that they were in a state of alarming decline and expanded their facilities. These Taiwanese, don't they know their own country?

But... but... surely the rate of increase fell off... Total numbers for the same period from 2015:

Jan '15	5722	23814	5897
Sept '15	6263	25997	6787

Yup, the nine month period ending in September, 2016 saw a greater rise in total number of establishments and rooms than did the same period in September, 2015. The devastation was immense, clearly.

But... but... tourist areas were hard hit, right? Nantou, 2016:

	est	rooms	ops
Jan	642	3120	673
Sept	675	3242	728

Nantou, 2015:

	est	rooms	ops
Jan	615	3012	619
Sept	627	3050	648

This is so... heartbreaking. In 2015 in this period, Nantou added 12 establishments and 38 rooms. In 2016 in the same period it added just 33 establishments and 122 rooms. 

Sorry, I have to stop writing now. It's too painful to keep exploring this swath of destruction any further.

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