The Taipei Department of Information and Tourism yesterday inaugurated the city’s first-ever luxury double-decker restaurant bus at City Hall Square ahead of entertaining fine-dining enthusiasts from Tuesday next week.
Starting yesterday, people could book tables for the 26-seater’s daily afternoon tea service and twice-daily dinner service, with those hopping on the bus treated to dishes prepared in the lower-deck kitchen by the Regent Taipei (台北晶華酒店).
A round trip is to take about 90 minutes for afternoon tea and two hours for dinner, said Eric Hsu (徐偉朝), chief operating officer of Sanjin Integrated Marketing Co (三晉整合營銷), the main operator of the bus service.
Photo: Liao Cheng-hui, Taipei Times
At the inauguration ceremony, Taipei Deputy Mayor Tsai Ping-kun (蔡炳坤) said that the restaurant bus would take patrons on a tour of the city’s landmarks and renowned sights while enjoying a quality meal.
“We want to promote the city as an open museum with the whole city ready for patrons to explore,” Tsai said. “So, we are happy that Taiwan’s first double-decker restaurant bus is set to hit the road.”
The service, which begins and ends at the Taipei City Hall MRT Station on Tuesday to Sunday, is to cruise past many of the city’s landmarks, such as National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and Taipei 101, Hsu said.
The idea for the service came from a survey conducted overseas two years ago, which found that cities such as Tokyo, Bangkok, London and Hong Kong had similar restaurant buses, he said.
“We learned from these surveys that they have had this type of bus for many years, and we wanted to bring the experience to Taipei,” Hsu added.
Although the tourism industry over the past two years has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan’s situation is relatively stable, Tsai said, adding that the time is right to launch the bus-based fine-dining experience.
“If the global pandemic is controlled and restrictions on travel can be eased, allowing international tourists to visit Taiwan, we estimate that after six months, the service would benefit the whole tourism industry in Taipei,” Tsai said.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
FORESEEABLE CONSEQUENCES: New technology always comes with new innovations by the iniquitous in exploiting users for financial gain or more nefarious ends Artificial intelligence (AI) “agents” say they can save users time and energy by automating tasks, but the growing power of systems such as OpenClaw is putting cybersecurity experts on edge. Powered by a wave of hype, OpenClaw today says it has more than three million users worldwide. The system allows users to create so-called agents, tools based on a large language model (LLM) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic PBC’s Claude, that can carry out online tasks. “We’ve moved from an AI you could talk with via a chatbot to an agentic AI, which can take action... the threat and the risks are
RSS