The ??? ?? ?? ???Taipei 101 skyscraper commands the urban landscape in Taipei, Taiwan. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING -- Shanghai-based family travel influencer Kong Tong has been following the news about mainland group tours to Taiwan in recent days.

Kong hoped that she and her son would be part of the first mainland tourist group to land on Taiwan should the ban on mainland resident visits to the island be lifted. The ban was put in place by the Taiwan authorities in 2020, cutting off visits to the island of mainland residents.

On Friday, the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced that group tour services to Taiwan would soon be resumed for Fujian and Shanghai residents. The announcement marked a major move in restoring normal interactions between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, which have long faced obstructions from Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities.

"I have bought my son many books and cultural products depicting the beauty of Taiwan, and he is so curious about the island," Kong said, noting that her son is especially eager to visit the Taipei Palace Museum, one of Taiwan's most-visited attractions among mainland tourists.

Kong, who shares her travel experiences on social media, is excited about the prospect of an upcoming trip to Taiwan, which would enable her fans on the mainland to explore the sights and get a feel for the island through her lens.

Like Kong, others involved in the mainland tourism industry have been looking forward to returning to Taiwan, which was one of the most accessible and familiar destinations for mainland tourists before the ban by the island's DPP authorities under the pretext of COVID-19 restrictions.

"Tourism professionals on both sides of the Strait have long anticipated this resumption," said Zhou Weihong, deputy general manager of Shanghai-based travel agency Spring Tour, adding that the company has been planning to design travel products and train the guides to meet the new market demand.

Within three hours of the announcement on Friday, searches for "travel to Taiwan" jumped significantly on Ctrip, China's leading online travel platform. Qunar, another major travel platform, has also reported an obvious surge in searches for flights to Taipei from Shanghai and Fujian's major cities including Fuzhou and Xiamen.

According to Luo Ying, marketing director of Xiamen Airlines International Travel Service Co Ltd., traveling to Taiwan is particularly appealing for people from Fujian due to the proximity and cultural affinity between the province and the island.

Luo noted that the company, which had been operating group tours to Taiwan since 2008, is now actively collaborating with its partners in Taiwan to develop new tourism products.

Many mainland scholars say the announcement of group tour resumption is a goodwill sign responding to the Taiwan tourism industry's expectations for the return of mainland tourists.

Wang Zhenwei, a senior researcher at Xiamen University's Graduate Institute for Taiwan Studies, noted that Taiwan has more than 4,000 travel agencies, most of which operate tourism-related businesses with the mainland.

The mainland has shown sincerity in promoting the peaceful, integrated development of the two sides of the Strait, and its goodwill has been welcomed by tourism professionals in Taiwan, Wang said.

Zhu Songling, a Taiwan studies professor at Beijing Union University, said that the upcoming return of mainland tour groups to Taiwan aligns with the island's mainstream public opinion, which is geared toward seeking peace, development, exchange and cooperation.

He highlighted that the most important thing now is whether the DPP authorities can acknowledge that mainstream public opinion and the strong appeals from Taiwan's tourism industry, actively respond to the mainland's goodwill, and promptly remove the various barriers and restrictions on cross-Strait people-to-people exchange and cooperation.