Businesses in Taipei’s Shilin Night Market are planning to shift their focus to catering to students, after several businesses closed amid plummeting visitor numbers, the Taipei City Government said.
While the number of people visiting shops and restaurants on Dadong Road is still significant, the number of visitors to businesses on Wenlin Road, the area’s main road running parallel to the Red Line of the city’s MRT metropolitan railway system, has declined, causing hundreds of businesses to close, Taipei Market Administration Office Director Chen Ting-hui (陳庭輝) said.
Many businesses in the area are increasingly offering products and services to students at the area’s several schools and universities with a total of more than 100,000 students, Chen said.
Photo: Yang Hsin-hui, Taipei Times
“We are planning a management system for market vendors. The system would include a designated area for their stalls,” he said, adding that it would also include measures to increase pricing transparency.
To raise the area’s appeal to visitors, the system would set a standard for ventilation systems at food stalls and require that trash bins be installed, Chen said.
The main reasons for the weak business in the area are the high rents — generally more than NT$100,000 per month for a storefront — and the reputation of the area for overcharging tourists, Chen said.
To address the issue, the city has held four seminars for business owners on strategies to refocus their operations, Taipei Office of Commerce Director Kao Chen-yuan (高振源) said.
It is also working with the businesses to promote the area for domestic tourism, he added.
There are 84 businesses remaining in the area, and foot traffic on the busiest days is 70 to 80 percent of pre-COVID-19-pandemic levels, Shilin Night Market Development and Promotion Association director Su Wen-shan (蘇文山) said.
In the past, most businesses in the area sold souvenirs or traditional Taiwanese snacks to tourists, or offered services such as foot massages, but many of them have begun to focus on products and services for students, he said.
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