More needs to be done to encourage Muslim visitors to visit Taiwan, Saudi Arabian travel industry representatives said, as the Tourism Bureau aims to attract more Muslim tourists.
Cathay Pacific Airways Riyadh-based sales and marketing manager Mazen Ibrahim Kabbout and several Cathay affiliated Saudi Arabian travel agents were this week invited by the bureau to visit Taiwan. It is the first time the bureau has invited Middle Eastern agents to explore business opportunities in Taiwan.
Taiwan needs to resolve visa issues if it wants to draw more tourists from Saudi Arabia, Kabbout said.
“All Arabs, especially Saudi Arabians, need to arrange visas before they come to Taiwan, but they do not have to arrange visas for Hong Kong or the Philippines. As such, it is easier for them to travel somewhere else,” he said, adding that Taiwan should waive visa requirements or make it visa-free for visitors who travel for a certain number of days.
Taiwan also needs more English or Arabic translators for tourists, as well as more Halal certified restaurants, Kabbout said
Tom Yang, president of Big 5 Tours Co, one of the nation’s 15 certified Arabic-language tour guides, said that almost all Arabic-language tour guides have other full-time jobs because they cannot sustain themselves as a guide for Middle Eastern tour groups.
The nation’s Arabic-language tour guides mainly come from three different sources, with the first of them being university graduates studying Arabic, Yang said.
Some former military attaches have studied Arabic while stationed in the Middle East and they have became certified Arabic-language tour guides on their return to Taiwan, Yang said.
The third source is Muslims living in Taiwan who have studied Arabic overseas on scholarships provided by mosques in Taiwan, Yang said.
Yang also said more flights between Taiwan and Middle Eastern countries were necessary.
Seoul has become a popular travel destination for Arabs because Korean Air and Saudi Arabian Airlines have launched direct flights between Seoul and Riyadh, Yang said.
Yang said the group was taken to Taiwan’s scenic destinations and tried mango shaved ice, as well as Taiwanese Halal food.
The bureau said the group also explored medical tourism opportunities with a visit to the Taipei Beitou Health Management Hospital.
National Chengchi University has the nation’s only Arabic-language and culture department. The number of graduates has declined from 40 in 2012 to 25 in 2014.
Bureau statistics showed the nation had about 200,000 visitors from Muslim-majority nations last year, up 11.1 percent from 2014.
The majority of Muslim tourists are from Southeast Asian nations.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS