Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Taipei Tourism Expo on May 5, Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said that travel and tourism would become the nation’s next “trillion-dollar industry.”
Chen announced that the government would launch five strategies for sustainable tourism: diversifying tourism markets, encouraging domestic tourism, assisting business transformation, developing “smart” tourism and promoting experiential travel.
It is significant that someone of the rank of vice president has proclaimed the important role that travel and tourism will play in economic development and transformation, and indeed proposed concrete development strategies to attain that goal.
It will be great if the plan succeeds.
However, if grand policy goals are not matched by a framework of complementary laws, they might turn out to be just pie in the sky. Notably, while destination management is becoming a mainstream trend in tourism and travel, the regulatory framework is stuck in the old pattern of centralized authority, which has long since ceased to meet contemporary needs.
Take for example the question of homestay establishments, which are popular among both domestic and foreign tourists. What makes Taiwan’s homestays so popular is not just that they are in buildings, but that they represent a particular mode of travel and a certain lifestyle.
Homestays are organically integrated with the culture, history and geographical environment, embodying the ideas of experiential travel and cultural interaction.
Unfortunately, if one looks at the Act for the Development of Tourism (發展觀光條例), the regulations governing the management of homestays treat them simply as buildings, and they impose a single set of management regulations for buildings, land-use zoning and fire prevention for the whole of Taiwan.
This uniformity makes it difficult for local authorities of areas that have top tourist destinations to match the requirements with local characteristics, historic buildings, cultural artifacts and so on when setting out standards for homestay buildings and facilities.
The most absurd thing is that the act restricts homestays to being run as subsidiary businesses rather than fulltime ones. This makes it impossible to apply ratings schemes like the star rankings that are given to hotels and restaurants.
If homestays are subject to such regulations, how can they play a leading role in developing experiential travel?
The same kind of problem exists with a regulation that requires youth hostels, which provide accommodation for backpackers, to provide car-parking facilities.
Experiential travel and in-depth tourism involve close connections with local people, culture and history, so there is a clear need for people who are thoroughly familiar with local culture, history and geography to plan tour routes, act as guides and provide personalized in-depth tour services.
However, the framework for travel businesses set out in the act starts out from the perspective of overseas and nationwide travel.
To qualify as guides, people are tested on their knowledge of the history and geography of Taiwan as a whole, while local conditions, customs and cultural monuments are not taken into consideration at all.
People who are enrolled by local governments as guides to local culture and history have sometimes even been reported to the authorities for breaking the law by acting as guides without having the required qualifications.
Do Taiwan’s policies to develop the tourism industry aim to go beyond the shallow stage of foreign tourists coming here for shopping and eating?
Do we want visitors to really get to know the unique scenery, human warmth and culture of various parts of Taiwan, and to fully enjoy its unique natural environment?
Such visitors could promote international exchanges and become spokespeople for the nation in the international community.
If that is what we want, then in-depth experiential travel based on local themes and emphasizing local characteristics is sure to become a trend, and local actors, such as travel businesses and guides, will play a key role in deciding the success or failure of this form of tourism.
Other countries that have successfully developed their tourism industries share the four key factors of climate, nature, culture and food as indispensable to their success.
Luckily, Taiwan, with its mingling of different ethnicities and special natural landscapes, offers plenty of variety in these four categories.
However, centralized uniform management has unfortunately prevented local destinations from effectively integrating the four factors based on their particular characteristics and developing their own unique features.
Tourism is software, not hardware. It is not a matter of traffic and how many light rail and tram lines get built, but rather a cultural question of how to use each location’s characteristics to entice tourists to visit.
Conventional tourism policies, laws and regulations start out from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ hardware-oriented mindset.
Clearly these things should instead be placed under the remit of the Ministry of Culture.
At the same time, legal regulations that were instituted on the grounds of consumer protection should be reviewed regarding whether they obstruct innovation in the tourism industry or prevent the emergence of new travel businesses.
Government departments should use the idea of a regulatory sandbox to encourage the development of new business models in tourism and hospitality.
Senior levels of government now recognize that travel and tourism is the locomotive of the service sector. What is needed is to promote innovation and development of the industry with a readiness to do it in nonstandard ways.
Taiwan could even adopt legislation akin to the Japanese Tourism Nation Promotion Basic Act, which defines the development of travel and tourism as an important national strategy.
Formulating brand-new regulations on innovation and development of the industry would make it possible to turn around the government’s understanding of travel and tourism, as well as that of the public.
We could then put into practice the idea of running the industry in a way that puts localities first, while the central government plays a secondary role.
We also need to recognize that tourism is an extension of culture and put a different agency in charge of the industry.
The value and purpose of homestay establishments need to be redefined. Locals should be allowed to plan local tours from the angle of regional development, and to recruit and train local guides. Such changes would create win-win solutions for local economic development and cultural exchanges, so that tourism goes beyond just seeing to really experiencing.
That would embody the real meaning of a nation built on tourism.
Huang Ming-jye is the Tsai Wan-tsai chair professor of law at National Taiwan University’s College of Law.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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