Government and local resources should be better integrated to present high-quality tourism packages and attract foreign tourists, while more focus should be placed on enticing Asian visitors, pundits said yesterday.
"Compared with Southeast Asian tropical islands, Taiwan lacks similar products like beach resorts in winter, which makes it more difficult to attract Western tourists," said Su Cheng-tien (蘇成田), director general of the Tourism Bureau.
"While we continue with plans to promote Taiwanese tourism in the West, more emphasis should be placed on our Asian neighbors, including Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan," he said.
Su made the remarks at a seminar held by the Chinese-language weekly The Journalist (
Stanley Yen (
"Quality and cultural characteristics should be emphasized to develop sophisticated tourism products ... since we cannot compete with Southeast Asian countries in terms of price," he said.
Taking hotspring resorts as an example, Yen said many hotels in Taiwan boast advanced hotspring facilities, yet many local tourists still fly to Japan to take a dip and enjoy a unique experience, despite the higher travel costs.
Participants also cited the lack of a clear promotion of Taiwan's specialties, including mountains and night markets. Instead, Taiwan's international exposure is generally from news footage of boxing matches in the legislature.
"To put Taiwan on the map, we need to build international theme parks, which have proved effective to lure foreign tourists," said Yu Kuo-Chien (游國謙), vice president of Janfusun Fancy World (劍湖山世界).
Since the government launched a six-year project in 2002 to double the number of foreign tourists visiting the country to 5 million by 2008, Johnson Tseng (曾盛海), chairman of the Travel Agent Association of Taiwan, said the government should loosen regulations on Chinese tourists.
"The entire world has their eye on China's booming market, but only Taiwan is pushing them away," Tseng said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”