Taiwan is wooing Asian corporate travellers this year with a new campaign that highlights the country’s traditional sites and quaint towns, as showcased at the Taiwan pavilion at the recent IT&CM China.
To open up these old and romantic locales, the campaign has shortlisted 30 rural towns to be featured.
These include Miaoli’s Yuanli Township, which is home to grass-woven arts and crafts; Tainan’s Yanshui District for its Beehive Fireworks Festival; Jiaoxi Township in Yilan for its hot spring hotels; and Hualien’s Fenglin, recognised by the Cittaslow slow food movement as Taiwan’s first “slow city”.
Nina Lin, deputy executive director of Meet Taiwan, told TTGmice that as local experiences like these permeate the leisure space, they are also gaining popularity among corporate travellers.
“We hope that business travellers coming to Taiwan can extend their stay and explore our country in this way. Some of our exhibitions provide curated one-day itineraries to delegates so that they can have a taste of such activities. We hope that this campaign will help visitors experience more of Taiwan’s cultures and local offerings,” said Lin.
Taiwan has also remained a strong destination for incentive travel, particularly from China and South-east Asia. Lin shared that the number of groups from South-east Asia had “increased tenfold” since the launch of the New Southbound Policy.
“Today, incentive groups demand for programmes that have an element of creativity and can accommodate large groups,” she observed.
However, Lin noted that the China and South-east Asia markets have different needs.
“The Chinese have certain expectations about Taiwan, and may want to visit famous landscapes like Alishan. Meanwhile, South-east Asians would prefer something that’s fresh and unique, and are more open to trying innovative things like using technology in their teambuilding activities.”
One significant finding from the study is that Asia’s best cities for bleisure are not necessarily its most liveable. Although the specific questions used in the survey were inspired by The Economist’s Global Liveability Index, some striking differences emerged.
