A weekly snapshot of Taiwan business news stories brought to you by CommonWealth and AmCham Taiwan’s TOPICS Taiwan Down 93,000 Jobs in June The Directorate-General of Budgeting, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) announced on August 8 that the number of people employed in Taiwan’s industrial and service sectors at the end of June had fallen to…
The COVID-19 outbreak that began in mid-May has brought hotels to their knees. Without a larger relief package, some may not survive. For most of the coronavirus pandemic, domestic tourism has been a bright spot for Taiwan’s hotel industry. Many hotels and B&Bs outside of Taipei – which is more reliant on the international market…
Travelers in Taiwan these days can expect to find a wide range of unique, modern places to stay. Type the name of any popular resort area or major city into a booking website and a huge list of options for lodging will appear. But if you have slightly unusual requirements – you need wheelchair access,…
If you have never been to a hot spring, the time is surely right for you to take a stress-busting hot-spring vacation in “the Heart of Asia.” Thanks to encouraging news from scientists working on coronavirus vaccines, people are once again daring to hope that international leisure travel can resume within months. When the door…
Taichung is an excellent launchpad for anyone wishing to explore the stunning mountains that crowd Taiwan’s interior. The city encompasses intensively farmed coastal lowlands, mid-elevation landscapes, and expanses of high-altitude wilderness within Shei-Pa National Park. At the same time, Taichung’s thoroughly modern core area, home to over half its 2.8 million residents, has more than…
For centuries, the Central Mountain Range that stretches nearly the length of Taiwan blocked the eastward progress of Han Chinese pioneers settling the western lowlands. As a result, the traditional cultures and lifestyles of the Austronesian indigenous people in the east remained largely intact until the 1895-1945 period of Japanese colonial rule. Some of the…
The pandemic has grounded Taiwan’s new carrier for the time being, but its long-term prospects still look promising STARLUX Airlines had the misfortune of launching its business amid the worst pandemic in a century. The new Taiwanese carrier began flying on January 23, the first day of the 2020 Lunar New Year holiday and the…
As Taiwan looks for ways to revitalize its international tourism industry once the coronavirus pandemic eases, part of the effort may be to implement what is known as a Destination Management Organization (DMO) program. The Travel and Tourism Committee section of AmCham Taipei’s 2020 Taiwan White Paper applauded the Taiwan Tourism Bureau’s plans to implement…
The domestic travel boom is a double-edged sword, boosting tourism revenue but straining limited resources. There’s a first time for everything, like booking a table for one at a pizza restaurant. I did so recently at the insistence of Tsao Yu-lin, owner of the Blueshine B&B on Taiwan’s Matsu islands, even ordering the pie in…
Taiwan’s tourism sector needs to start planning now for how it will deal with the post-COVID-19 environment. My older brother Seth, despite repeated invitations, has yet to make it to Taiwan and has never expressed more than occasional fraternal interest in the country and culture that’s been the cornerstone of his younger brother’s life. But…
