As the government gradually eases travel entry restrictions, the number of inbound and outbound tourists from various countries has been increasing. Taiwan has officially entered the post-pandemic era with a relaxation of entry restrictions. With quarantine hotels becoming obsolete, there is an urgent need for transformation in the local hotel industry to boost tourism in Taipei City.
The Department of Information and Tourism of the Taipei City Government joined hands with the Dream Travel Taiwan Association to host a training course on hotel industry transformation. The course is aimed at strengthening the resilience of the hotel industry and predicting trends. The participants responded that they have gained a great deal of knowledge from the lectures and experience shared by professionals from the fields of industry, government and academia.
To promote recovery of the tourism industry, the “2022 Annual Taipei City Hotel Industry Transformation Course and Site Visits” was held over five sessions since October to train hundreds of hotel practitioners. The Taipei Department of Information and Tourism focused on four major aspects of transformation — sustainability, international hospitality, digital application and innovative marketing.
In addition to reiterating guidelines for cleanliness, the course this year also focused on the reception of foreign guests to improve service quality and broadening the participants’ knowledge of international trends. The informative sessions garnered high praise from participants.
Taipei Department of Information and Tourism Commissioner Liu Yi-ting (劉奕霆) said that to keep up with the global trend of sustainable development, the Taipei government passed legislation to achieve a net-zero emissions target by 2050 in June this year, becoming the country’s first local government to make such a commitment.
Taipei strives to promote the city’s net-zero transition, and moves toward a future of carbon neutrality in step with the world. However, a shortage of labor in the hotel sector continues during recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Hotels at home and abroad have begun to widely use automated devices for reception, food delivery and cleaning. Demonstrating such technology, professionals showed how digital solutions can help hotel owners deal with lower staffing levels.
To show how services targeted to foreign guests can be strengthened, the course invited international tour guides to talk about the best ways to welcome overseas visitors. There were also courses to teaching how to promote the charms of Taiwan, and how to digitally upgrade hotel software and hardware.
Other courses included the application of big data and NFT in tourism, hotel hygiene and safety, branding, and consumer complaint resolution, which were targeted at meeting the industry’s needs coming out of the pandemic.
Liu said that Taiwan has once again ranked second in the Global Muslim Tourism Index this year. Since 2019, the Taipei Department of Information and Tourism has been promoting related programs, continuously enhancing a program to create a Muslim-friendly environment, and bolstering tourist attractions and the hotel industry in Taipei.
It has been four years since the department began improving facilities necessary for Muslim religious life, such as eating and praying. Many five-star hotels and quarantine hotel operators are optimistic about tourism recovery, as the phase of pandemic prevention comes to an end. Hotels all actively joined the mentoring program in the middle of the year, and look forward to the return of tourism prosperity.
(Advertorial)
MARKET LEADERSHIP: Investors are flocking to Nvidia, drawn by the company’s long-term fundamntals, dominant position in the AI sector, and pricing and margin power Two years after Nvidia Corp made history by becoming the first chipmaker to achieve a US$1 trillion market capitalization, an even more remarkable milestone is within its grasp: becoming the first company to reach US$4 trillion. After the emergence of China’s DeepSeek (深度求索) sent the stock plunging earlier this year and stoked concerns that outlays on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure were set to slow, Nvidia shares have rallied back to a record. The company’s biggest customers remain full steam ahead on spending, much of which is flowing to its computing systems. Microsoft Corp, Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc are
Luxury fashion powerhouse Prada SpA has acknowledged the ancient Indian roots of its new sandal design after the debut of the open-toe footwear sparked a furor among Indian artisans and politicians thousands of miles from the catwalk in Italy. Images from Prada’s fashion show in Milan last weekend showed models wearing leather sandals with a braided design that resembled handmade Kolhapuri slippers with designs dating back to the 12th century. A wave of criticism in the media and from lawmakers followed over the Italian brand’s lack of public acknowledgement of the Indian sandal design, which is named after a city in the
The US overtaking China as Taiwan’s top export destination could boost industrial development and wage growth, given the US is a high-income economy, an economist said yesterday. However, Taiwan still needs to diversify its export markets due to the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s administration, said Chiou Jiunn-rong (邱俊榮), an economics professor at National Central University. Taiwan’s exports soared to a record US$51.74 billion last month, driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products and continued orders, with information and communication technology (ICT) and audio/video products leading all sectors. The US reclaimed its position as Taiwan’s top export market, accounting for
NEW MODELS: AI researchers are facing challenges in managing deceptive behaviors, with limited regulation and testing, as the race for advanced models intensifies The world’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models are exhibiting troubling new behaviors — lying, scheming and even threatening their creators to achieve their goals. In one particularly jarring example, under threat of being unplugged, Anthropic PBC’s latest creation, Claude 4, lashed back by blackmailing an engineer and threatening to reveal an extramarital affair. Meanwhile, ChatGPT creator OpenAI’s o1 tried to download itself onto external servers and denied it when caught red-handed. These episodes highlight a sobering reality: More than two years after ChatGPT shook the world, AI researchers still do not fully understand how their own creations work. Yet the race to
RSS