Taiwan’s hotel room rates are too high, but when the government subsidized the domestic travel industry, some hotel owners increased room prices, leading people to prefer travel abroad to excursions in Taiwan.
Moreover, the number of Japanese visiting Taiwan is not as high as expected.
Data released by the Tourism Administration showed that while the number of Japanese visiting Taiwan has reached 50 percent of pre-COVID-19 pandemic figures, those traveling to South Korea and Southeast Asia have surpassed 80 percent.
Japanese visit South Korea because of the proximity of the two countries, while they visit Vietnam and Thailand because travel in those nations is cheap and the sightseeing spots are relatively new to them, some academics say.
This indicates that Japanese tourists are quite sensitive to price differences after the pandemic.
Domestic travel in Taiwan has been declining because of an unsatisfactory ration of cost to performance.
A good hotel room costs at least NT$5,000 to NT$6,000 a night, a better one is about NT$10,000 and a high-end one would be NT$20,000 to NT$30,000.
Meanwhile, a night at a five-star hotel in Shinjuku in Tokyo costs the equivalent of about NT$6,000, while a standard room is NT$3,000 to NT$4,000, meaning Taiwan’s hotel room rates are 60 percent to 100 percent more expensive than in Japan.
How can the country expect to attract foreign tourists?
If the occupancy rates of the nation’s hotels is to be increased, service standards must improve, and, more importantly, better deals are needed for clean, comfortable rooms.
Given that Taiwan is still among the top three overseas destinations for Japanese, the nation must develop more ways to attract them.
It should focus on people aged 50 or older, as they are better-off, usually have more leisure time and many have not been to Taiwan.
There should be a focus on places in Taiwan that have links to Japanese history, culture and art, as such visitors would want to experience how their nation’s past is intertwined with Taiwan’s present.
Taiwan’s old Japanese buildings would fit the bill.
Taiwan should promote such attractions in ways that are most familiar to the target groups and welcome such visitors as valued guests.
This would boost the nation’s hospitality industry for years to come.
Dino Wei is an information engineer.
Translated by Emma Liu
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS