Taiwan will soon start to play matchmaker for foreign tourists as part of a campaign to position itself as a “destination for romance,” the Tourism Bureau said yesterday.
“We want to explore every opportunity to make Taiwan ‘romantic,’” said Cheng Yi-ping (鄭一平), section chief at the bureau’s International Travel Division.
Beyond continuing to feature Taiwan as a romantic destination for spending honeymoons or shooting wedding photographs, Cheng said the bureau is trying to reach singles through event-based travel packages.
A pilot program will run on Nov. 24 and Nov. 25 to test the waters, Cheng said, with about 100 single foreign tourists (half men and half women aged 20 or older) to be randomly divided into small groups as they tour picturesque townships in southern Taiwan.
Cheng said the itinerary was partly patterned after the popular Japanese realitsy show Ainori, or “Love Ride,” which tracks the budding love between strangers traveling in foreign lands on the same bus.
In the tour to Tainan, she said, the “assigned” groups will have the chance to visit four temples dedicated to the Old Man Under the Moon (the god of love and marriage).
The visitors, mostly from Japan, South Korea and Malaysia, will also participate in what the bureau described as “surprise events” to further interact with one another.
“We have received a very positive response so far,” Cheng said. “You can tell from the fact that we have received enquiries from gay people and a mother-daughter duo.”
Even if some of the people brought together on the tours do not hit it off, Cheng said she believed the campaign would enhance Taiwan’s reputation as a fun and romantic tourist destination. She also said she expected it to create a loyal base of return customers who visit Taiwan often because of the bonds they have developed with the country and its people.
Aside from offering the Old Man Under the Moon theme, the bureau will extend the “romantic” concept to other theme tours, shaping packages by appealing to people’s fantasies and imagination, Cheng said.
“Our concept is that being romantic means being able to feel the various joys of life,” she said.
For example, a celebrity chasing itinerary targeting the fantasies of Southeast Asian tourists will be offered next year through a collaboration between the bureau and the local entertainment industry, she said.
The tour concept is to have fans of Taiwanese rapper and actor Jay Chou (周杰倫), for instance, tour the spots that appear in his work, attend his promotional events and visit the restaurants or shops he owns.
“Even just a glimpse of his agent’s office or office building will do,” she said. “You call it crazy? We call it romantic.”
TENSE SITUATION: If the storm does not bring rain, Taiwan might have to wait until next month amid water scarcity in the center and south, an expert said Typhoon Surigae is to bring rain to the nation’s east coast and mountainous areas in central and southern Taiwan from Wednesday to Friday, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the typhoon’s center was 1,170km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip. The radius of the storm was 280km, and it was moving northwest at 9kph, with a maximum wind speed of 198kph. The bureau forecasts that the storm would switch to a northerly direction when approaching the east coast of Luzon Island in the Philippines on Wednesday, CWB forecaster Lin Ding-yi (林定宜) said, adding that Surigae would
SEEKING CLARITY: Some members of the US delegation asked KMT legislators in a meeting to address their party’s position on the so-called ‘1992 consensus,’ sources said A US delegation tasked by US President Joe Biden to reaffirm the country’s commitment to its partnership with Taiwan yesterday wrapped up a three-day visit to Taipei. Former US senator Chris Dodd, former US deputy secretaries of state Richard Armitage and James Steinberg, and US Department of State Office of Taiwan Coordination Director Dan Biers departed at 11:20am on a private jet. The members of the delegation, all friends of Biden, arrived on Wednesday and met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and other government officials. During the three-day visit, the delegation also met with six members of the Legislative
Taipei’s street names should reflect a “Taiwanese spirit,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said in an online video released yesterday, in which he asked why many of them are named after locations in China. In a three-minute video uploaded to a Facebook page called “Taiwanese Uncle Ko Wen-je” (台灣阿北柯文哲), the mayor suggested changing the names of Taipei streets. The page’s banner was a photograph of Ko on Jade Mountain’s (玉山) main peak. The page was closed at about noon, about four hours after it was made public. Ko said that street names in the capital named “Ningxia,” “Tibet,” “Beiping” — an old name for
‘AN EXCUSE’: The intent of Beijing’s incursions was ‘intimidation and coercion,’ a senior US official said, adding that China was using the US to justify its actions Chinese carrier drills and stepped-up incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in the past few weeks are meant to send a message to Washington to stand down and back off, security sources in Taipei said. The increased activity — which China, unusually, described as “combat drills” on Wednesday — has raised alarm in both Taipei and Washington, although security officials do not see it as a sign of an imminent attack. Rather, at least some of the exercises are practicing “access denial” maneuvers to prevent foreign forces from coming to Taipei’s defense in a war, one official familiar with Taiwan’s security
RSS