A commercial featuring Taiwan’s beauty began showing in New York City’s Times Square on Thursday and will run for one month as part of efforts to promote tourism, officials posted in the US said.
The campaign, which will run between Christmas and New Year, marks the first time a Taiwanese commercial has been shown in the square.
From 6am until 2am every day, the two-and-a-half minute ad will be shown every hour on two wall screens on either side of the Times Square Ball — the focus of the New Year countdown that attracts more than 1.6 million revelers every year.
Kao Jen-chuan (高振群), director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, said the commercial provides a rare opportunity for Taiwan’s beautiful scenery to be brought to the world stage.
Chang Cheng-yuan (張政源), director of the Tourism Bureau’s New York office, said the ad was expected to greatly increase the nation’s media exposure and help attract more visitors.
Visitor arrivals from the US dropped by 5 percent year-on-year in the first 11 months of this year, officials said.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
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