The number of visitors to Hualien County exceeded 10 million last year, despite a decrease in the number of Chinese tourists to the area, statistics released on Monday by the Hualien Tourism Department showed.
Last year, the 12 major tourist attractions in the county saw a combined total of 10.27 million visitors, an increase from 9.55 million visitors in 2016, the department said, adding that this was still a lower number than 2014’s 10.88 million.
Taroko National Park continued to attract the most visitors at 4.65 million, a 2.8 percent increase from 4.52 million in 2016, the department added.
Photo: Hua Meng-ching, Taipei Times
Coming in second was Cisingtan (七星潭), which attracted 1.35 million visitors last year, it said.
The Cinbujhihzih Walk (親不知子海上古道) — a new attraction in Fongbin Township (豐濱) that opened last year — saw nearly 170,000 visitors in its first four months, it said.
The total number of visitors rose, mainly because the number of people who went on a one-day trip to the county increased, department acting director Peng Wei-tsu (彭偉族) said.
Visitors did not stay overnight and their local spending was not high, Peng said.
Although the number of visitors last year shot up, surveys showed that South Korean visitors only went to Hualien for one-day tours of Taroko National Park and Cisingtan, Peng said, adding that hotels and guesthouses did not benefit.
Hualien plans to participate in tourism fairs abroad to boost its marketing, Peng said, adding that he hoped to increase the number of days international visitors stay in the county.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications and the Taiwan Railways Administration have been working together with Hualien business owners to push travel packages that include transportation and accommodation to reduce the difficulty of purchasing train tickets to the area and increase hotel occupancy rates at the same time, Peng said.
Tourism-oriented businesses should grasp changing trends and innovate, expand their customer base and work with other industries, said Executive Yuan Eastern Taiwan Joint Services Center Executive Director Hsu Chuan-sheng (許傳盛), who is a former director of Kaohsiung’s Tourism Bureau.
The MICE — meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions — industry is a high value-added business, Hsu said.
The government should encourage the Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital, National Dong Hwa University and other organizations to host international conferences, Hsu said.
Attendees could then extend their stay in Hualien for leisure purposes, he said.
“As a major tourism destination, Hualien should maintain high standards and find unique local traits,” Hsu said, adding that would be its real advantage.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods