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FEATURE: Leisure farms attract more foreign tourists

More than 21,000 foreign visitors chose to stay at "leisure farms" in Taiwan last year, giving the nation another attraction to lure international visitors.

In tourism fairs held in Singapore and Malaysia earlier this month, the package tours sold for Taiwan's leisure farms increased by 20 percent compared to the same period last year.

The average length of the packages also increased from an average of six days to eight days.

"Tourists can feed the sheep, milk the cows or launch sky lanterns at the farms. Farm owners can also cook for you and show you around personally. And, of course, there are various fun DIY activities," said Chiu Shiang-ling (邱翔羚), a secretary for the Taiwan Leisure Framing Development Association (台灣休閒農業發展協會).

Chiu said the enthusiastic hospitality of the farm operators and the opportunity to experience something new were the main factors behind the jump in the number of tourists from Southeast Asia visiting leisure farms in the past few years.

Last month, the tourism industry sent a delegation of more than 50 members to tourism fairs in Singapore and Malaysia. In addition to representatives from local amusement parks, hotels and travel agencies, many of the members were farm operators.

The farm operators said they were delighted by interest level they found at the shows in Singapore and Malaysia, adding that they were asked questions ranging from how to pick fruit to how to raise cows.

However, Chiu said the active promotion work of Taiwanese farm operators was crucial to maintaining the sector's popularity, citing feedback the association obtained from Singaporean and Malaysian travel agents.

The Shangrila Leisure Farm (香格里拉休閒農場) in Ilan County was one of the first in the industry to attract business from Southeast Asia and draws the highest number of foreign tourists, Chiu said.

Chiu said that other popular tourist farms include Flying Cow Ranch (飛牛牧場) in Miaoli County, the Tai-Yi Ecological Education Resort (台一生態教育休閒農場) in Nantou County and Dakeng Recreational Farm (大坑休閒農場) in Tainan County.

Sigaporean and Malaysian travel agents said that Taiwan's farms are attractive to people in Southeast Asia who have not been exposed to rural culture before and who want to enjoy agricultural products, Chiu said.

The total number of foreign visitors to leisure farms is expected to reach 30,000 to 40,000 people this year, Chiu said.

The growth in the number of foreign visitors, however, has exposed problems with the nation's tourism infrastructure, particularly the poor English of many local tour guides, who are unable to make their guests feel at home.

A Malaysian travel agent also said that Taiwan lacks restaurants that serve Muslim food, a key stumbling block for Malyasia's 20 million Muslims.

Taiwan also lacks a well-known international amusement park, which hinders its ability to compete with Japan or Hong Kong, the agent said.

However, Wu Chao-yen (吳朝彥), the chief secretary of the Tourism Bureau under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, said that travel agencies are required to provide bilingual tour guides when serving foreign guests and that his bureau would increase its monitoring of the guides' language ability.
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