The Keelung City Government last week signed a framework agreement with the governments of Kaohsiung, Taitung County and Lienchiang County to contract cruise liners to develop tourism to Taiwan’s outlying islands.
The administrations have contracted a private consultancy to hire foreign industry experts to inspect their harbors and attractions for integration with cruises, Keelung Director-General of Transportation and Tourism Lee Kang (李綱) said.
Smaller cruise liners carrying international visitors would be better suited for the limited capacity of airports and hotels in Mastu, Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島), Lee said.
Island-hopping cruises of five to seven days operating from Keelung and Kaohsiung could attract high-spending foreign tourists, which would boost the economy, he said.
Inspections of facilities, attractions and routes are expected to be completed by July, before discussions with ocean liner operators would commence, with a pilot program expected to begin next year, he said.
Last year, 940,000 tourists visited Kaohsiung on cruise ships, a number the municipal government hopes to increase to 1 million this year.
The Port of Keelung’s West Passenger Terminal is adding automated customs and a visitor center to its facilities, and is building a second passenger terminal at its West Storage Units No. 2 and 3, the city government said.
The Star, Princess and Costa groups operate cruises from the Port of Keelung, bringing significant revenue to the harbor, industry insiders said, adding that their vessels last year bought NT$600 million (US$19.4 million) in food, up from NT$200 million in 2017.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater