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
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS