The Taipei City Government's Bureau of Transportation yesterday held a short Japanese language-training course for hotel workers in Taipei. The course was initiated because Japanese tourists have become the largest tourism group visiting Taiwan in recent years.
The language-training courses are financed by the Cabinet's Tourism Bureau and are aimed at promoting the international competitiveness and service quality of Taipei's hotels.
"Nearly one million Japanese tourists visited Taiwan last year. Despite the negative impact of SARS on the industry, Japanese tourists still predominated in tourism bookings last season," the bureau's director, Lin Chih-ying (林志盈), said yesterday at the launch of the training course.
"It is important for hotel attendants to have Japanese language ability in order to reach a high level of service excellence, which makes visitors feel at home," Lin said.
Due to the success of the English training courses held for hotel workers last year, the Japanese training course has attracted more than 400 hotel workers, who competed for only 240 available places, from almost 140 hotels in Taipei, he said.
"We hope to lift hotel service quality as a whole before 2004, the year designated as Taiwan Tourism Year," Lin said.
The course focused on training in basic conversation and etiquette when receiving Japanese tourists, and was presented by 18 Japanese teachers from a professional hotel-training school in Japan.
"What we want to stress in the training is the sincerity behind the language and also emphasize an understanding of Japanese culture and habits," said Mayumi Shirayori (白寄麻由美), the teaching group's leader.
Katsuhisa Uchida (
He said that Japanese tourists have transformed from groups of older people into young individual travelers.
"I think it would be convenient for Japanese tourists to travel in Taiwan if a Japanese-speaking environment is on offer, which would also promote interaction and understanding between Japan and Taiwan," Uchida said.
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