Tourism Bureau Director-General Janice Lai (賴瑟珍), whose leadership has helped raise the number of international tourists visiting the nation to 6 million last year, retired yesterday after almost 39 years of government service.
Lai will be succeeded by current deputy director-general David Hsieh (謝謂君).
Starting as an entry-level employee in 1973, Lai assumed her position as the bureau’s director-general in 2007, when she became its first female head.
Photo: CNA
“My first two reports at the bureau were about possible ways to develop the nation’s tourism industry and about the increase in GDP and its impact on the nation’s tourism sector,” Lai said. “I think the same topics should be used to test all future entry-level employees at the bureau.”
The bureau’s most recent endeavor under her leadership was to ask people to select the nations’ top 10 tourist spots. The bureau also stirred up a whirlwind of discussion on night markets in 2010 with its night market competition.
However, Lai’s career at the bureau was not all a bed of roses.
Last year she faced several challenges — the derailment on the Alishan Forest Railway, as well as the Suhua Highway accident in 2010, both of which involved the deaths of Chinese tourists.
Asked how she plans to spend her retirement, Lai said she wants to spend more time with her family and she has plans to co-author a book on tourism administration with a former colleague.
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