TAIPEI, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Up to 400 tour groups from the Chinese mainland are scheduled to visit Taiwan during the Spring Festival holiday, local media reported Wednesday.

The number of mainland visitors could exceed 10,000 from Jan. 24 to Feb. 1, or more than 1,000 each day, the reports said. This year, the Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, falls on Jan. 26.

Hotels near major tourist attractions, including Ali Mountain and Sun-Moon Lake, were almost fully booked, the reports quoted Taiwan tourism chief Janice Lai as saying.

Local tourism operators said they expected that expanded charter flight services could bring 1,000 to 3,000 mainland tourists to Taiwan daily in the future, even on ordinary days.

Under an agreement signed June 13 by the mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation, mainland tourists were permitted to visit Taiwan starting in July. Previously, mainland residents could only visit Taiwan for a limited number of reasons, such as business.

Initially, operators complained of lower-than-expected mainland tourist visits, but tourism picked up after such joint efforts as increasing the number of terminals and cross-Straits flights.

Source: Xinhua