TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — About 20 percent of Taiwan's foreign visitors in the first 10 months of 2020 have been from Japan, according to recent statistics released by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC).

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate tourism industries around the world, Taiwan has seen an 86.3 percent drop in the number of its total inbound visitors from last year. Nevertheless, the country still welcomed more than 1.33 million travelers from abroad during the last 10 months.

According to MOTC statistics, 267,640 Japanese have traveled to Taiwan this year for various purposes, accounting for 20 percent of the country's total number of foreign visitors. 178,000 visitors from South Korea and 176,000 from Hong Kong and Macau also visited Taiwan between January and October, each representing 13 percent of total foreign arrivals.

The number of Chinese tourists plunged dramatically by 95.7 percent from 2019, largely due to China's severe pandemic situation. An 87.6 percent decrease was also observed in the number of travelers from Hong Kong and Macau for the same reason.

The statistics showed that nearly half of Taiwan's foreign visitors in 2020 are between the ages of 20 to 40. Meanwhile, foreign nationals aged above 40 and below 50 constituted 17 percent of the total number of visitors.

A little over 98 percent of Taiwan's foreign arrivals in 2020 visited the country between January and March. Since then, only 23,000 international visitors have been recorded.