Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said.
The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office.
Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said.
Photo coutesy of the Changhua County Government
The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs — the nation’s fourth-most popular attraction with 12.7 million visitors last year — did not appear on the list before, it said.
The government uses people counters, infrared sensors, turnstiles, ticket sales, parking records, telecom data, airport and harbor logs, and commercial records to track the number of travelers, the Tourism Administration said.
Sourced from local governments and private enterprises, the data were annually compiled at the administration for publication, it said.
The Lukang historical area, Wenhua Road Night Market and Taoyuan’s Laojie Riverside Park (老街溪沿岸步道) were new additions to the top 10 list, it said.
Beigang Chaotian Temple (朝天宮) in Yunlin County, Songshan Cultural and Creative Park (松山文創園區) in Taipei, Mitsui Outlet Park in New Taipei City and Yijhong Street Commercial Area (一中商圈) in Taichung were in the top 10 ranking consecutively, it said.
Eastern Taiwan’s tourist attractions did not manage to reach the top 20, it said.
Last year’s survey of visitors showed a significant rise in tourism across the broad, Tourism Administration Director-General Chou Yung-hui (周永暉) said yesterday.
The number cannot be utilized to determine if visitors stayed overnight after visiting an attraction, which is significantly more beneficial to the economy than one-day visits, he added.
More than 70 percent of domestic tourists made one-day trips, and the ministry’s priority is to make people stay overnight, Chou said.
Providence University associate professor of tourism Huang Cheng-tsung (黃正聰) said the Tourism Administration’s data showed that tourism increased by 35 percent last year.
Newly created attractions and existing ones accounted for 15 percent and 20 percent of that increase respectively, he said.
The end of the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the rise in tourism, but more refined technology for counting the number of people visiting a place might partially account for the gains, Huang said.
Counting Taipei 101’s visitors by the ticket sales of its observatory — as was done previously — would result in a much lower number than using telecom data to measure the flow of people in the area, he said.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
The Chinese military has boosted its capability to fight at a high tempo using the element of surprise and new technology, the Ministry of National Defense said in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) published on Monday last week. The ministry highlighted Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) developments showing significant changes in Beijing’s strategy for war on Taiwan. The PLA has made significant headway in building capabilities for all-weather, multi-domain intelligence, surveillance, operational control and a joint air-sea blockade against Taiwan’s lines of communication, it said. The PLA has also improved its capabilities in direct amphibious assault operations aimed at seizing strategically important beaches,
RSS