TAIPEI -- Over 62,000 individual tourists (without contracts to travel agencies) from the Chinese mainland traveled to Taiwan in December, registering a new high, the local tourism bureau announced on Saturday.

A total of 2.85 million mainland tourists visited Taiwan during 2013, a year-on-year increase of 10 percent. Among them, 522,000 traveled as individual tourists, up 174 percent compared to the year before.

Taiwan first opened the door to individual tourists from mainland cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen in 2011 and granted permission to ten more mainland cities in 2012.

There is no limit on tourists traveling in tour package groups.