Japanese actress Haruna Kawaguchi has been chosen as Taiwan’s tourism ambassador in Japan this year, the Tourism Bureau told a news conference yesterday.
The popular 28-year-old actress has starred in many films and TV series in Japan, including Silent, which premiered on Fuji TV last year.
Japan is one of Taiwan’s most important markets for international tourists in the post-COVID-19 era, bureau Deputy Director-General Trust Lin (林信任) said.
Photo: CNA
“Surveys that we conducted in Japan during the pandemic showed that Taiwan would be one of the top three travel destinations for Japanese tourists after the pandemic eases. Japanese women aged 20 to 39 are particularly interested in traveling overseas,” Lin said.
“Our surveys also showed that our target customers overlap with Kawaguchi’s fans in Japan. She was Japan’s ‘Queen of Endorsement Advertising’ last year, serving as a spokesperson for many Japanese products. Her personality and popularity match our criteria for a tourism ambassador in Japan,” he added.
As Japanese travelers visit Taiwan mainly for the food, culture and outdoor activities, Kawaguchi would visit travel destinations across the nation to shoot tourism commercials for the bureau in the next four days.
“We hope that the Japanese would be touched by Kawaguchi’s travels in Taiwan and motivated to follow in her footsteps,” Lin said.
Kawaguchi, who arrived in Taipei yesterday to start the commercial shoots, told the news conference that it was her second time to visit Taiwan.
She said through a translator that although she did not travel much around Taiwan during her first visit as she was working, she was impressed by the warmth and passion of Taiwanese.
“I am looking forward to visiting different places in Taiwan this time,” she said.
About 2.16 million Japanese tourists visited Taiwan in 2019, the bureau said.
From January to April, Taiwan welcomed 1.62 million international travelers, led by visitors from South Korea, followed by Japan and North American countries, bureau data showed.
Japan did not downgrade its COVID-19 status until April 29, paving the way for the start of overseas travel for Japanese, Lin said.
“We are positive about the prospects of the tourism market in Japan. Taiwan ranked as the No. 2 overseas travel destination for Japanese tourists during Japan’s Golden Week from April 29 to May 5. We are also confident about Miss Kawaguchi’s influence,” he said.
“Taiwan on May 1 downgraded the status of COVID-19 to that of a less serious disease. This month, we will begin distributing incentive funds for international tourists. We are expecting our 2 millionth international visitor to arrive toward the end of this month,” he said.
Since 2001, the bureau has been retaining tourism ambassadors as part of its marketing strategies to attract Japanese tourists, including Japanese actress Masami Nagasawa, Taiwanese boy bands F4 and Fahrenheit and Taiwanese singer Show Lo (羅志祥).
It also recruited several goodwill tourism ambassadors, including Japanese singers Mai Kuraki, Sachiko Kobayashi, Masaharu Fukuyama, Takuya Kimura, as well as Taiwanese baseball player Yang Dai-kang (陽岱鋼).
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS