Amount of Business Transactions With Chinese Tourists

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4.2 Amount of Business Transactions With Chinese Tourists

We find large variation among the perceived business transactions of different vendors. Eight vendors readily admit to have a very good business with Chinese tourists. Two interviewees even estimated the share of Mainlanders among their customers to be above 50% (H4, H5).

All of these eight vendors with large benefits were selling Taiwanese delicacies like Stinky Tofu, Fruit, Oyster Omelets, Aiyu Jelly Drinks or Souvenirs for tourists and some of them specifically targeted Chinese customers. Vendors in this group issued statements like “since 2 years they [Chinese tourists] are increasingly influential” (H1), “yes, about 50% of [our]

customers are Chinese” (H4) or “yes, many [Chinese] people come here. They probably do influence our business” (H6).

The other 14 vendors more or less all said they don’t get large benefits from the mainland Chinese tourists. Answers included: “We don’t really benefit from them” (M2),

“No, our [business] is already here for more than 40 years. We cannot earn any money off them. Our customers are mainly local people” (M6), “Not much. The customers make up for less than 10%” (L4) or “They only look and walk past. Very few buy something.” (L6).

But we can further divide this group, when we look at their perception of the importance of the tourists for the business. When asked, how a hypothetical scenario

(suddenly all tourists from the mainland would stay away) would influence the business, we find six of the vendors still reluctant to admit any influence on the business: “No, we don’t get any benefit from them. More or less tourists wouldn’t make a significant difference.” (L2) or “They come only very seldom to our store at all. This would absolutely not influence business. It’s best if they do not come at all” (L5). On the other hand, there’s a group of eight vendors, who think this would have an influence on the business situation: “We would have less customers. It probably would influence our business a bit.” (M5)

According to the answers to those two questions, we then can divide the vendors into three different groups (see also Table 1):

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- Large benefit group, which actively targets Chinese customers and earns a lot, if not even the major share of their revenues from the tourists (8)

- Middle benefit group, which does not easily admit to earn a lot of money, but which also in part relies on tourists as a source of income (8)

- Low benefit group, which does not perceive the large number Chinese tourists as a part of their customer base and denies the influence of them in business matters (6) We can use these three groups to compare their attitudes and beliefs in light of those categorizations and therefore get a better understanding of the influence of the business with mainlander tourists on the independent variables. The composition of those groups itself is interesting and confirms our earlier assumptions. As noted above, the large benefit group consists only of Taiwanese delicacies or tourist oriented businesses. The two other groups tend to attract a relatively larger share of local customers and there are some observations, which do suggest explanations for this. At first, the low benefit group consists only of businesses, which do not sell any of the “famous” Taiwanese delicacies. Although some of the businesses are very well known on the night market and run their business for many decades (for example vendors: L4, L5, and L6) their food appears to not be among the “must-eats” for most of the Chinese tourists. The same is true for the businesses L2, L3, and L1, which appear to attract almost no tourists and aim almost entirely for locals. Businesses selling “stinky tofu”, Taiwanese fruits or other “branded” delicacies, however, can be found in the large benefit group, although not all of them necessarily attract that many Chinese customers.

This might be the case, because there also seems to be another factor which is important for the economic benefit here. Apparently, the location also plays a role. When we look at the medium benefit group, we find a large share of Taiwanese delicacies as well as some very regular businesses without any special reputation. In part, this can be explained by the choice of location. While all of the businesses in the low benefit group (with the exception of a retail store) are restaurants with seating, in which a considerable amount of time needs to be spend before consumption, almost all of the businesses in the large benefit group are stalls or

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booths, which offer faster service and the possibility to eat “on the go”. The only two exceptions here are two Taiwanese delicacy restaurants, both of which are in a special

position. The first business (H2) also has a small stall on another location of the night market and, therefore, gets the advantages of both business types and the second business (H8) is very different from most other night market businesses and requires a reservation weeks in advance, because they are so popular and do not rely on any passersby customers.

Accounting for this, we find a possible explanation why all of the Taiwanese delicacies restaurants with seating are grouped together in the medium benefit group, while many ordinary food stalls also belong to the same group and the large and low benefit group both appear to be very similar in composition.

Future Economic Prospects

When asked about the future prospects, most of the vendors do not see any large difference compared to the present situation. The large benefit group does profit very much and all of the vendors of this group without any exception expect to gain a good share of any further increase of Chinese tourists on the night market. In contrast, the low benefit group largely expects to gain no significant benefits at all from this development. Notably, there are two exceptions here and one vendor states that “this could influence it [the business situation]

a little and become more” (L6) and another one also hopes to get more customers and believes “the more [Chinese] the better” (L4). The medium benefit group is largely divided and, while some also hope for a larger share of Chinese tourists in the future (M4), there are also other vendors, which actually predict a negative influence on the business situation. For them, the main customer base still constitutes of Taiwanese people and they fear that the amount of tourists scares away many of the Taiwanese customers. They are anticipating a development similar to the popular Shilin Night market in Taipei, which is crowded with tourists from the mainland and from other countries and, therefore, avoided by many local Taiwanese: “[there are] too many Chinese on the night market. I feel they are even more than Taiwanese. Also, I’ve heard that some Taiwanese don't come because of Chinese people. All together I now have less business” (M3), “[If the government allows more Chinese to come

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to Taiwan] less Taiwanese come to the night market” (M5), “some Taiwanese do not come anymore because of the Chinese tourists” (H7). The future prospects with a further increase of tourists, thus, might cause very different results for the vendors. Those who do profit from tourists might have a very contrasting viewpoint of this development in comparison to the businesses, which largely rely on local customers.

Especially the fact that some of those vendors see the Chinese tourists affecting their business negatively is interesting for this research. While the overall future prospects match the present development and most vendors do not see a large change in the shares of Chinese tourists they will receive, the negative aspect in which the presence of Chinese tourists

“scares” away the local customers is very remarkable and counter-intuitively suggests an influence of the amount of business with Chinese tourists not only on the large benefit group (positive), but also on the low benefit group (negative).