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Tourism managers on both sides of the Taiwan Straits urged Taiwanese authorities to change their stiff policy and let tourists from the mainland visit the island as soon as possible.

The sharp increase in the number of Taiwanese tourists to the mainland in the last 14 years has made travel agencies aware of how lucrative it would be to book holidays on the island for mainland tourists, said Tong Hualing, vice-chairman of the Travel Association of China.

"We warmly welcome Taiwanese visitors to the mainland for sightseeing, and travellers from the mainland should have the same right to visit Taiwan,"Tong said.

"We hope Taiwanese authorities adopt effective measures to welcome tourists from the mainland since we have the same ancestor and cultural tradition."

Most of the managers working in Taiwan's tourism industry expressed the same desire at the Fifth Meeting of the Tourism Industry of the Taiwan Straits, which held in Dalian recently.

Lee Chine-song, board chairman of the Taiwan-based Travel Quality Assurance Association, said that his agency's members also wish to make the travel both ways.

"We are putting more pressure on officials to open Taiwan to mainland travellers, which means the real exchange of the people, and I hope that day will come in the near future," Lee said.

Tourists from Taiwan are satisfied with the mainland's development of the tourism industry and regard the mainland as a top tourism destination, said Christopher Hsu, chairman of the Travel Association of China.

Hsu said that 3.4 million Taiwanese travellers visited the mainland last year, nearly half of the total outbound Taiwanese travellers and up 10.7 per cent compared with the previous year.

A survey from the Taiwan communications department shows that 23.8 million Taiwanese tourists have visited the mainland since 1988.

"But the number of mainland travellers to Taiwan is still zero,"Tong said.

More than 300 managers from Taiwan and about 1,000 managers of the mainland travel agencies took part in the two-day meeting, which was held in Wuhan, Xiamen, Changsha, Chongqing and Chengdu respectively in the past four years.