Kaohsiung is hoping to boost cruise tourism this year, targeting visitors from Southeast Asia, Japan and Hong Kong, an official said yesterday.
Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau Director Tseng Tzu-wen (曾姿雯) said 44 cruises are scheduled to dock in Kaohsiung this year, bringing an estimated 120,000 overseas tourists to the city.
A total of 46 cruises docked in the city in 2015, but the number plunged to only 14 last year, the Kaohsiung City Government said.
Photo: CNA
The city welcomed the SuperStar Virgo, owned and operated by Star Cruises, to the Banana Pier in Kaohsiung yesterday.
The ship was carrying 1,800 tourists from Hong Kong and the Philippines.
Tseng said the SuperStar Virgo would be using Kaohsiung as a home port for four months, starting this month.
This would help with the city’s effort to promote the central government’s “new southbound policy,” which seeks to advance ties with Southeast Asia, South Asia, New Zealand and Australia, she said.
The city said it is planning a series of activities to promote the city’s cruise tourism, including giving gifts to visitors on cruises and working with travel agencies to launch package tours.
Each time a cruise docks in the city, it generates about NT$2 million (US$65,664) in tourism revenue, the bureau said, adding that it hopes cruise tourism can add more than NT$100 million to the city’s economy this year.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching