With the government actively promoting rail travel, Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) said that its spring travel package sales exceeded its target by 50 percent.
The company had set a target of selling 40,000 travel packages, but easily sold 60,000 packages.
Taipei also made it to the top three best-selling destinations for the first time — a list usually dominated by Kaohsiung, Tainan and Taichung, the company said.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Railways Administration
The Tourism Bureau, in collaboration with the Taiwan Visitors Association, the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA), THSRC, the Forestry Bureau and tourism operators, on July 13 established a “rail travel association” to promote rail travel.
Aside from marketing railway travel in Taiwan, the association also promoted exchanges with similar organizations abroad, the THSRC said.
The Tourism Bureau plans to make 2022 the “year of railway travel,” it added.
The THSRC said it used its off-peak train service to develop travel packages with tourism operators.
This strategy, which began to produce results three years ago, has resulted in 170 service routes, and doubled the number of travelers using the high-speed rail system, from 1.3 million riders in 2016 to 2.68 million last year, it said.
Travel to rural towns by rail has also increased threefold this year, and rail-and-hotel package bookings jumped 131 percent, it said.
The company’s promotion of rail travel during the spring season boosted ridership across the board, the company said, adding that packages for its routes to Miaoli County’s Siangtian Lake (向天湖) in Nanjhuang Township (南庄) quadrupled.
Those to destinations in Nantou County also nearly quadrupled, it said.
Bookings of Hotel MEZI by rail passengers increased 97 percent this year, and package deals that included stays at Caesar Park Hotel Banqiao were 6.1 times the number last year, it said.
Bookings at Hotel Cham Cham in Taipei were 5.6 times last year’s number, and those at Royal Inn Taipei Linsen were 4.5 times last year’s number, it added.
Meanwhile, the TRA said that it saw a 33 percent increase in sales of its one-day rail passes to destinations in northeastern Taiwan this year.
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck off Taitung County at 1:09pm today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 53km northeast of Taitung County Hall at a depth of 12.5km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Taitung County and Hualien County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Nantou County, Chiayi County, Yunlin County, Kaohsiung and Tainan, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage following the quake.
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Chinese wife of a Taiwanese, surnamed Liu (劉), who openly advocated for China’s use of force against Taiwan, would be forcibly deported according to the law if she has not left Taiwan by Friday, National Immigration Agency (NIA) officials said yesterday. Liu, an influencer better known by her online channel name Yaya in Taiwan (亞亞在台灣), obtained permanent residency via marriage to a Taiwanese. She has been reported for allegedly repeatedly espousing pro-unification comments on her YouTube and TikTok channels, including comments supporting China’s unification with Taiwan by force and the Chinese government’s stance that “Taiwan is an inseparable part of China.” Liu
RSS