TAIPEI - About 213,100 Chinese mainland tourists visited Taiwan last month, up 29.13 percent year-on-year and a record monthly high, the island's tourism department said Tuesday.

The department said more than 1.6 million mainland tourists visited Taiwan from January to November, up 6.23 percent year-on-year. The mainland is currently the largest source of tourists for the island.

The number of Japanese tourists, the island's second-largest tourist group, reached a record high of more than 135,000 in November, up nearly 23.7 percent year-on-year, it said, adding that the number of tourists from the Republic of Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations?also saw obvious growth last month.

On the whole, Taiwan saw around 619,000 overseas tourists in November, a record monthly high that is expected to bring the island a step closer to its goal of attracting 6 million overseas tourists this year, the department said in a press release.

It said that nearly 5.44 million overseas tourists visited Taiwan in the past 11 months, a year-on-year increase of almost 8 percent.

The figures are encouraging for Taiwan's tourism and hospitality industry, and the local economy has also benefited from the boom, it said, adding that overseas visitors bought around NT$10.26 billion ($340 million)-worth of goods between January and November.