A senior tourism official has encouraged Taiwan tourism students and their teachers to become grassroots ambassadors across the Straits.

Du Jiang, executive president of the Beijing-based Association for Tourism Exchange Across the Taiwan Straits, told a Taiwan delegation of 165 members from 14 colleges on the island on Tuesday, to improve their understanding of the Chinese mainland to help increase exchanges. The visiting delegation concluded a six-day tour on Wednesday.

Du is also vice chairman of the National Tourism Administration.

Du said a number of incentive policies have boosted tourism across the Straits, especially this year.

In April, Taiwan started to allow individual tourists from six more cities including Tianjin, Chongqing, Nanjing and Guangzhou to visit the island, in addition to Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen where similar policies were introduced in 2011.

The Chinese mainland is currently the largest source of tourists for Taiwan, making up about 30 percent of the island’s visitors, he said.

The total number of visits made by mainlanders to the island has surged to 1.61 million from January to October, an increase of 44 percent year-on-year. During the same time period, Taiwan residents have made nearly 4.5 million visits to the mainland, the third largest source for the inbound tourism market.

The mainland further loosened its tourism policy in September, allowing people in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen without a local hukou — a household registration system — to apply for individual tourism to Taiwan.