The Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) plans to create its own international hotel brand as part of its corporatization.
The Legislative Yuan in May passed the third reading of the State-run Taiwan Railways Corporation Act (國營台灣鐵路股份有限公司設置條例) — to transform the TRA from a regular government agency into a state-owned corporation — and amendments to the Railway Act (鐵路法), which would allow the TRA to utilize its assets more freely.
Business not related to the TRA’s rail operations include real-estate investment, property leasing, food sales and merchandising, but income sources and asset development can be diversified after the amendments take effect.
Photo: CNA
The TRA has been utilizing its assets and promoting tourism by rail, aiming to increase its income earned from affiliated businesses from NT$5 billion (US$166.83 million) last year to NT$10 billion by 2030, TRA Planning Department head Chiang Ming-i (江明宜) said on Friday.
During the discussion phase of corporatization, the TRA proposed opening hotels, an idea modeled after the East Japan Railway Co’s operation of the Hotel Metropolitan Premier Taipei, he said.
Potential land for hotels includes the TRA Employees’ Training Center in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) and land it owns in Yilan’s Jiaosi Township (礁溪), he said, adding that the agency could cooperate with hot spring hotel groups or create its own brand.
Before taking on long-term hotel plans, the TRA should develop land around Kaohsiung Main Station, which was given to the railway operator after urban land readjustment, as well as its old dormitories on Taipei’s Andong Street and Shida Road, he said.
To promote tourism, the TRA plans to transform the Pingsi (平溪), Neiwan (內灣) and Jiji (集集) branch lines into tourist lines, targeting tour groups and single-ticket tourists, he said.
It also plans to launch excursion trains with new themes and continue to collaborate with travel agencies to promote tourism by railway, he said, adding that the agency hopes that income from excursion trains could reach NT$140 million this year, increasing to NT$214 million in 2025 and NT$430 million in 2030.
Sales of boxed meals in the TRA system peaked in 2019 at 11 million, generating revenue of NT$850 million, but dropped to 5.13 million boxes last year, with revenue declining to NT$360 million, and 2.74 million meals in the first half of this year, with NT$195 million in revenue, TRA Affiliated Business Operation Center deputy general manager Wang Wen-chien (王文謙) said.
The agency could develop special boxed meals and other merchandise based on popular railway tourism trends to attract a wider variety of tourists and commuters, Chiang said.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: