Japanese cities have proven to be the most popular travel destinations for Taiwanese heading abroad for the Lunar New Year holiday next month, an analysis by the global travel service portal Skyscanner yesterday showed.
Skyscanner said it analyzed the travel destinations on its Web site and mobile phone applications that its Taiwanese users searched most frequently, with the dates of departures set within the duration of the Lunar New Year holiday between 2014 and this year.
Six of the top 10 most-searched destinations for the Lunar New Year holiday this year were in Japan: Tokyo (No. 1), Osaka (No. 2), Okinawa (No. 4), Fukuoka (No. 8), Sapporo (No. 9) and Nagoya (No. 10), the company said.
Also on the list are Bangkok (No. 3), Seoul (No. 5), Hong Kong (No. 6) and Singapore (No. 7).
This year’s results are very different from last year’s rankings and those in 2014, it said.
In 2014, Osaka (No. 1) and Tokyo (No. 2) were the only two Japanese cities on the top 10 most-searched destinations list, with the rest in South Korea, Southeast Asia and Europe.
Last year, Okinawa (No. 7) and Sapporo (No. 9) joined the list.
The company attributed the lure of Japan to the Japanese government’s tourism campaigns aimed at international visitors, as well as the devaluation of the yen, saying that more people have been motivated to travel to Tokyo, Osaka and elsewhere in Japan, which in turn boosts the ranking of Japanese cities on the list.
An increase in flights offered by Taiwanese and low-cost flight carriers has also contributed to the rise in the number of Taiwanese traveling to Japan, it said.
That all the cities on this year’s Top 10 list are in Asia showed that an increasing number of people are choosing short-distance trips over long-distance ones for the most important family holiday of the year, it said.
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