A new business alliance between a popular hotel, a travel agency and a medical association announced a program yesterday to promote medical tourism in Taiwan.
It is the first time that the three industries have joined forces to promote medical tourism, the market for which, according to estimates by the Council for Economic Planning and Development, could be worth up to NT$7 billion (US$220 million) per year.
Under the program, the Grand Hotel, the Taiwan Hospital Association and the Taipei-based Asia-Pacific Society of Travel Medicine (ASTM) will cooperate in promoting tourism packages to foreign visitors.
The cost of a four-day tour is estimated at between NT$30,000 and NT$60,000. The tour would include a three-hour health checkup, an anti-oxidation treatment, skin care and a magnetic wave face lift session.
Customers would stay at Taipei's Grand Hotel and spend their leisure time visiting local tourists spots, such as Taipei 101 and the National Palace Museum.
ASTM Director Shieh Ying-hua (
Citing Thailand as an example, Shieh said foreign nationals paid some 730,000 visits to the Southeast Asian country in 2003 on similar trips, and the number grew by 16 percent in 2005.
Although Thailand, Singapore, South Korea and India have promoted medical tourism for years, Shieh said he believes that Taiwan stands a good chance of attracting a considerable number of foreign visitors for medical tourism thanks to its superior levels of medical care.
Japan and Middle Eastern countries are potential sources of customers, he added.
Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達), president of the Taiwan Hospital Association, said that Singapore lures some 500,000 medical tourists each year and Thailand double that number.
The critical issue now facing Taiwan, he said, was that the country must effectively improve the standard of its services if it hopes to catch up with Thailand or Singapore in the medical tourism field.
Dragon Tours General Manager Yang Chung-lin said Taiwan has a great potential to develop medical tourism, even though it is just beginning to promote the industry.
"Taiwan's medical level is quite competitive compared with those of neighboring countries," he said confidently.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS