Thanks to a popular film and a TV show shot in Kenting (墾丁), the beach resort area in Pingtung County at the nation’s southernmost tip is attracting a record number of tourists from Hong Kong, local hoteliers said.
The hoteliers said the movie Cape No. 7 and TV teenage idol soap opera Wayward Kenting appear to have helped bring in more visitors from Hong Kong in recent months, with many college and senior high school students visiting the local beaches in groups of three or four.
“In addition to backpackers, the number of tourists arriving as families and those traveling on ecological and in-depth tours from Hong Kong has also increased since late last year,” said Apple Sun (孫家泓), who is in charge of public relations at the Howard Beach Resort Kenting hotel.
She said this was a result of information about Kenting’s natural scenery that was widely disseminated on the Internet, on Hong Kong TV channels and in local magazines.
Cantonese, rather than Japanese, is now the foreign language most often heard on Kenting’s streets, local hoteliers said.
Much of Cape No. 7 — the bestselling Taiwanese movie in history — was filmed at the Chateau Beach Resort.
Kuo Shih-he (郭世和), a public relations employee at the Chateau Beach Resort, said “the number of Hong Kong tourists staying at the hotel so far this year has grown by about 30 percent over the same period of last year, while the 2008 number was some 30 percent higher than the 2007 level.”
Staff at two other hotels in the area — the Howard Beach Resort Kenting and the Caesar Park Hotel Kenting — have also noticed the effect Cape No. 7 has had on room occupancy.
More Singaporean tourists have also been drawn to Kenting, they said.
Visitors from Hong Kong and Singapore are usually also interested in buying local specialty foods as gift items for relatives and friends at home.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do