In a bid to attract more mainland visitors and increase traffic at the Kaohsiung Airport, the city government now offers new incentives to

major airlines by rewarding each new air route to Kaohsiung with subsidies up to 3 million NT dollars. But there are still doubts in the travel industry over the effectiveness of the new measure.

The number of services to and from Kaohsiung International Airport is declined.

So far, there are 10 airlines operating 19 international routes from the airport.

The country's opening to Chinese tourists seems to have little positive effect on the airport.

Therefore, the Kaohsiung City Government allocates a special budget of NT$10 million to encourage airliners to offer new routes from Kaohsiung.

Since the landing fee for Taoyuan and Kaohsiung airport is the same, the city government hopes to use this as an incentive for airliners.

Given the nature of the subsidy, airliners will only get their subsidy when they have at least two services each week with an occupancy rate of over 60%.

But travel agents reserve their comments on the new proposal, as they believe the launch of new routes is based on the market needs.

Since the number of Mainland Chinese tourists is huge, the new measure may encourage more tour groups to use the airport more frequently but it will have limited effect on routes to and from other cities.