The sun and heat of July bring out the parasols and long sleeves, and women conscious of their good looks are sure to remember to put on the sun screen lotion. But whereas they fear the sun in the city, at the beach they brown their bodies the color of ancient bronze. These are two completely different mind sets, of course. Especially since the SARS epidemic put people in low spirits for two to three months, now that the epidemic is over, the appetite for vacation is stronger than ever. In recent days if you dropped in during a work break at any company you would likely be able to hear professional women in animated conversation about how they were going to get on the "post-SARS sales promotion train" and use the summer holidays to take the kids on a good vacation.

In one Taipei broadcasting company a Miss Li said she didn't have much leave time and had selected a package tour put together by hotel operators and a theme park in central Taiwan. The price was just half the normal rate. It is much cheaper and faster than going to, say, Tokyo Disney World. Miss Chang decided on a package tour to Kyushu in Japan and, with her younger sister, was taking along three children to "cash in on a bargain like we haven't seen for decades."

A warm and friendly national character and a multi-faceted culture is also an asset for the development of tourism. The Mazu pilgrimage (right) and the Aboriginal harvest sacrifice (opposite page) have become important local culture tourist attractions.

"Fly Taiwan Fly"

Unlike the "travel scene" in May and June, when travel agencies would get phone calls canceling trips, airlines have recently been busy switching to large, high-capacity jets for flights to Southeast Asia. Taiwan theme parks such as the Janfusun Fancyworld, the Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Village and Yamay Resort have each reported daily visit numbers exceeding 10,000.

Stanley Yen, honorary chairman of the Taiwan Tourism Association, which has been working on behalf of the industry for many years, says that we are now in an upswing following the slump. The first sector to recover is domestic travel (in-country travel by Taiwan nationals), and the next is travel abroad by Taiwan nationals. It will take at least two months of marketing promotion following the July 5 decision by the WHO removing Taiwan from the list of SARS-infected areas for foreign visitors to Taiwan to start getting back into the game.

In any case, the domestic tourist economy is rapidly gaining ground after its precipitous fall and entrepreneurs feel like they have jumped from the cold pool at a hot springs straight into the hot pool, going from one extreme to the other. Aside from SARS receding into the background and the approach of the summer holiday season, a new-found unity among tourism entrepreneurs has been a key element in the rapid resurgence of the industry.

From time to time in the past one heard of price-cutting competition and bloody battles in the tourism industry, but in mid-June the "Fly Taiwan Fly" campaign begun by the Tourism Association pulled together elements from all levels-travel agencies, hotels, amusement parks, representatives of national scenic areas and parks-and carried out a whole series of promotional activities. Domestic air travel had a two-for-one ticket where the second person traveled free, tourist hotels sold all rooms for NT$999, regular hotels sold them for NT$666, amusement parks had a buy-one-get-one-free program, tourist agencies charged only NT$499 for any domestic one-day tour . . . . In addition to all sorts of promotional travel deals, businessmen continue to offer up new types of programs.

In the beginning many businessmen felt the "Fly Taiwan Fly" campaign would not be able to rescue the situation, having no idea that the market would react with such unusual enthusiasm. No one had foreseen that the renewed examination of management methods (and not just in the tourism industry) caused by the SARS episode would open people's eyes to the limitless potential of the domestic travel market.

A "magnificent ocean and a beautiful island" as the ancient historical chronicles recorded-giving international tourists the opportunity to learn firsthand of the beauty of this precious island not only plays a role in restoring the country's lustrous image, it also embodies the spirit of "all one family within the four seas."

Improving the environment

Had it not been for the encounter with SARS, this would have been a key year in the take-off of the Taiwan tourism industry. In addition to private entrepreneurs abandoning their hide-bound attitudes and moving forward hand in hand to develop the market, the Executive Yuan's plan to double the number of foreign tourists was already on track last year with an estimated investment over the next six years of almost NT$80 billion and a yearly target for visitors to Taiwan in 2003 and beyond of three million, up from 2.6 million of previous years. Also, the Legislative Yuan passed a new law governing hot springs in the first half of the legislative session, opening up hot springs areas to commercial management. According to Taiwan Hot Springs Association figures, more than NT$50 billion will be invested in the hot springs industry in the coming two years. Most of this will go for large-scale projects, like the Build-Operate-Transfer project at Chihpen Hot Springs in Taitung County, with an investment that will reach over NT$40 billion and cover an area of some 38 hectares.

The government and private entrepreneurs were making their final push to the finish line when suddenly the SARS epidemic struck out of nowhere and hinted at the reality behind the dream: Is Taiwan the right place to devote so much effort to developing such a fragile industry?

Because over the last several decades' economic development has taken precedence over environmental protection and culture as a topic of public concern, Taiwan has become an over-developed island. Beautiful slopeland has collapsed from deforestation and illegal construction, rivers and coastlines have been "tamed" by lining them with concrete, and the once-gorgeous landscape has been almost totally destroyed through the overplanting of betelnut trees and high-altitude agriculture. Add to this the longstanding lack of manpower and insufficient budget of the Tourism Bureau, which theoretically manages tourism, and you have what insiders jokingly refer to as an industry "made worse after being inadequate to begin with." Developing an industry under these circumstances raises a question: Is it worth investing a huge budget and much manpower in a sector at the mercy of natural disasters, the international political climate and the damage from commercial over-development?

Facing these questions, Su Cheng-tien, director-general of the Tourism Bureau, brings up another perspective. "We should first ask ourselves: Is this something that is needed?" Su says that from the point of view of national economic development, because in recent years labor-intensive industries have moved overseas and WTO entry has seriously undermined the economies in farming and fishing villages in places like Penghu, Taitung and Pingtung counties, there is an urgent need for the tourism industry to increase employment opportunities. As to whether or not Taiwan is "suitable" for tourism, although one could argue that Taiwan does exhibit some over-development, on the whole, surrounded on all sides by water, and with mountains rising almost 4,000 meters high, Taiwan has rich natural endowments. The country's natural assets are certainly as good or better than those of Hong Kong, Singapore or Korea. If those countries can run a booming tourist industry there is no reason in the world why Taiwan should take a back seat and not do the same.

Su says the modern management concept for the tourism industry is to put economics, environmental protection and cultural affairs together in a synergistic combination. The desire to develop the tourism industry gives Taiwanese the opportunity and motivation to work together for the protection of the environment as well. Furthermore, in addition to increasing employment, developing tourism forces people to engage in community planning, and encourages investments of energy in local cultural affairs, ecology, recreation, leisure and public safety. At the next level the development of the tourism industry raises Taiwan's international visibility and quickens the pace of its integration into the international community. You could say the benefits of developing a tourism industry are truly innumerable.

In the wake of the SARS epidemic, domestic tourism entrepreneurs joined together and organized a "Fly Taiwan Fly" campaign. Su Cheng-tien, secretary-general of the Tourism Bureau (second from right) and Stanley Yen, honorary chairman of the Taiwan Tourism Association (far right) hold an ice sculpture of the word SARS in the hope that the warm enthusiasm of their fellow countrymen will quickly melt the hardships brought on by the epidemic.

From 2000 to 2010 worldwide expenditure on travel is expected to rise from US$4.1 trillion to US$8.6 trillion, the contribution to GDP from tourism industries will rise from 3.6% to 3.8%, and the number of tourism-related jobs will go from 198 million to 250 million. No wonder that regardless of natural assets, all countries are actively seeking to develop their tourism industries. Neighboring countries like Singapore, Korea, and Indonesia all upgraded their government agencies responsible for tourism at least ten years earlier than Taiwan and vigorously promoted the tourism industry, including overseas marketing campaigns.

"To take an optimistic view of it now, SARS in fact helped the Taiwan tourism industry conduct a top-to-bottom examination of itself while it was still intent on following past practices. Unhealthy companies were weeded out by the mechanism of the market, while the survivors were those with some concept of risk management," says Stephen Wu, president of Zion Tours and Zion International Co., a veteran of the industry for over forty years. After the SARS epidemic died down, domestic tourism was the first to recover, bringing timely relief to tourism entrepreneurs. As a result, the importance of domestic tourism to the overall industry suddenly became clear, showing that the Executive Yuan's policy of following the model of Japan and making domestic tourism a first priority was correct.

According to Tourism Bureau statistics, more than 1.1 million Taiwan nationals traveled abroad in 2001. Foreign exchange for tourism reached NT$280 billion. Although domestic travel figures stood at more than 97 million, travel outlay was only NT$248 billion. Obviously there is a lot of room for growth in the domestic tourism market.

Stephen Wu says that Taiwan is like Japan in that both have far more domestic than foreign tourists. Eight of the ten largest tourist agencies in Japan manage domestic tourism and depend solely on this market. Japan has managed the tourism industry with amazing skill. This is especially true for the hot springs areas popular with the silver-haired generation, where nature is combined with human artifice, places that can truly be described as "products of culture," like the famous Hakone and Izu hot springs areas. They have opened up a walking path based on the one used by the girl in the great writer Yasunari Kawabata's novel, The Dancing Girl of Izu. They have also decorated and made into an exhibition hall the inn that Kawabata frequented, as well as his favorite hot spring. To take advantage of the scenery along the route, railway cars have been refitted with surrounding glass enclosures better suited to appreciate the view. The railway cars alone have thus becomes a valuable tourist resource.

Taiwan has rich natural resources. The sight of the scenery in the Takoro National Park makes visitors from afar sigh in amazement.

The Kenting Spring Scream

There is still a long way to go to revolutionize the Taiwan tourism industry, but a firm foundation was laid three years ago when the two-day weekend policy went into effect. The resulting jump in domestic travel has gradually led to positive results for the industry. Many domestic travel destinations have begun to resemble international ones in scope. Jane Tai, deputy managing editor of Mook Publications, a publisher of travel magazines and books, says that the constant wave of travelers in the wake of the two-day weekend policy has now given birth to many unique hotels, hostels and restaurants in places like Kenting, Chiufen and Ching Ching Farm. In less than two or three years the operations in these localities have caused people to see things in a new light.

Take Kenting as an example. For five or six years now, since they began staging the "Spring Scream" music festival to which youth bands from all over the world are invited, southern Taiwan has become a music and dance mecca for Taiwan youth. Every spring and summer innumerable music festivals and rave parties are held, while alongside the beach roads, music bars and all sorts of stores have popped up. Sun, beach, waves, rock and roll music, beer . . . young people are creating another Hawaii right in Taiwan using their own financial resources.

Chiufen, a center of nostalgia travel as a result of Hou Hsiao-hsien's movie City of Sadness, was originally a small, backward little town. But a flood of tourists has led to an increase in employment and not only are people returning to the fold, the community has secured its future because of this and has become quite a lively place. Ching Ching Farm in central Taiwan is also driving local economic growth. It offers activities like getting up-close with the sheep herd there, and there is also the attraction of nearby peach and apple orchards. Nearby, not only are there rows of restaurants opened by locals, but even the international chains 7-11 and Starbucks coffee houses have opened outlets, leading to a perfect fusion of the romance of the sheep ranch with the consumer habits of the visitors.

A warm and friendly national character and a multi-faceted culture is also an asset for the development of tourism. The Mazu pilgrimage (right) and the Aboriginal harvest sacrifice (opposite page) have become important local culture tourist attractions.

People in Taiwan are extremely energetic and have a power of imagination that can "make something out of nothing." Yet, although tourist destinations can blossom quickly because of domestic travel, price and quality are out of proportion in the industry. The problem of an overall lack of planning thus becomes obvious.

According to Tourism Bureau statistics, 72% of travel by Taiwan citizens is concentrated on the weekends and holidays. The off-peak travel drop is very serious. Tourist hotels must balance out a week's expenditures against two days of holiday business. No wonder prices remain high. Peter Kuo, President of Edison Travel Service in Taipei, points out that when the cost of going to Phuket is not much different than spending your vacation in Kenting, most people opt to go overseas and just do "short vacations" domestically. This has created a vicious circle between consumer habits and price.

On this point, Su Cheng-tien says the government's plan to double the number of tourists includes the solution to the problem of off-peak travel as a key element. For example, it promotes a national travel card and encourages tourist spending among public employees during non-vacation periods. It encourages private investment in large-scale development plans for areas appropriate to extended vacations. It encourages the elderly to do in-country travel. It opens the market for foreign tourists to visit Taiwan. All these are important policy points, especially at the current time when foreign visitors to Taiwan are numbering at most 2.6 million a year and growth is slowing. The Bureau of Tourism plans to do more promotion and is hoping by 2008 to break the 5 million mark. By that time perhaps the off-peak travel situation will have improved.

"As for European and American tourists, Taiwan is perhaps not their first choice in Asia but Taiwan is just next door for visitors to the neighboring countries of Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and even mainland China, and it does have its own appeal," says Su Cheng-tien. Foreign visitors to Taiwan must come a long way and it is quite expensive, but from the Taiwan perspective, a foreign tourist creates great economic benefits here. Airline flights, hotel stays, food, transportation, amusement... each and every category is a business opportunity.

The tourism industry has created jobs for people of all ages. For this reason many local governments vigorously advocate tourism and even travel to Taipei to organize promotional activities. The picture shows a press conference held in Taipei for Taoyuan County's Lotus Festival.

Of MICE and men

Although the overseas market is enormous, a strategic plan of development is needed if Taiwan wants to rapidly increase the number of foreign tourists. Stanley Yen, honorary chairman of the Tourism Association, has in recent years been promoting the "MICE" program, an acronym that stands for "Meetings, Incentives [i.e. travel as a form of corporate benefit or bonus], Conventions, Exhibitions." He says that the MICE program could bring in dozens of visitors at a time, and as many as 10,000 or more for an event of enormous scale, so that the business opportunities created would be limitless. Also, Taiwan's international image is not prominent enough. If Taiwan wants to be a "target destination" for European and American tourists, then this approach gives twice the results with half the work. This is especially true for large-scale international conventions like those for the publishing or dental professions. Participants in these events represent the upper ranks of society. Not only is there a great deal of profit to be made, Taiwan's international visibility can be raised at the same time. For Taiwan, this represents both an economic and political benefit.

"Twenty years ago Taiwan saw the potential of the MICE market right along with Singapore and Hong Kong. But today, we in Taiwan have not begun to tap this market, while every year there are more than a thousand conventions taking place in Singapore," says Stanley Yen. The problem is that Taiwan has only increased its physical infrastructure but has been slow to act in the international marketing sphere.

Similar in nature to MICE, foreign study in Taiwan currently constitutes an important focus. For several decades Taiwan has been a key place for the study of the Chinese language. "A student must eat, have a place to live, spend his money, and so on, and once here he stays for several weeks or even more than a year. This is also an enormous market," says Stephen Wu. The government is currently emphasizing this market and has organized interdepartmental government meetings and private sector business conferences on the topic. In addition it will soon set up a pilot program. But as for results, the main thing is still the question of sufficient international marketing.

Well-known director Hou Hsiao-hsien's film City of Sadness has turned Chiufen into a tourist hotspot. New development opportunities have thus opened up for this onetime backward mountain town.

The best laid plans

Raising people's consciousness about Taiwan is naturally the best way to attract tourists. Daniel Mak, a professional guide for almost twenty years, has strong views on this score.

"Most overseas visitors to Taiwan have the same reaction: How is it I never knew Taiwan was such a beautiful place?" he says. Especially on visits to Taroko National Park guides need give very little by way of explanations. Tourists are simply bowled over, and even on the standard city tour visitors are more than satisfied, demonstrating that the basics of Taiwan tourism are quite adequate and simply in need of improvement.

Daniel Mak points out that if there is a minimum critical mass of tourists, private operators will come up with many products for them. He points to activities on which he has taken groups of people-sometimes as many as one hundred-taking part in international conferences, for whom it is possible to organize a number of special tours. There are tea tours to Maokung (a suburb of Taipei with many tea houses which have excellent views) and visits to tea farms; museum tours, with the National Palace Museum or the Taipei Fine Arts Museum taking up a whole day on their own; and eating tours, which can go for several days straight because Taipei has restaurants offering fine cuisine from all regions in China and around the world, and you can find anything your heart desires.

"These different modes of tourism present a fresh and lively image for Taiwan. The key is how to project this, how to get it out into the public eye," says Mak. Entrepreneurs can do the work of arranging the tours, but only the government can handle the enormous task of international marketing.

Aside from insufficient international marketing, the tourism environment itself harbors a hidden problem: Overall planning cannot keep pace with market changes. Jane Tai takes the example of Ching Ching Farm, where the explosive growth of visitors has already caused severe overcrowding. On holidays there are sure to be traffic jams, and the rows upon rows of hotels have destroyed the natural scenic beauty. "Once things have gotten out of hand, it's hard to put them back right," she says.

Or take the example of the internationally known holiday mecca of Alishan. At the beginning of the year there was a minor train derailing incident and it took several hours to get the injured down the mountain. They had to use a series of different transportation modes, taking trains, automobiles and helicopters. A safety deficit came to light that greatly cuts into the quality of the area as a tourist destination.

Hualien has always been a major tourist destination in Taiwan. In recent years it has attracted a great deal of commercial investment. The vacation village in the picture has chosen the English name "Promised Land," symbolizing the hope that Taiwan can truly become a promised land for tourists.

New interdepartmental meetings

Faced with suggestions from all sides and a situation demanding numerous fixes, Su Cheng-tien smiles with great pride. He explains that in the past due to its low rank and insufficient budget the Bureau of Tourism was simply unable to meet the challenge. But since the initiation of the program to double the number of tourists, the Executive Yuan has set up an interdepartmental committee personally chaired by Premier Yu Shyi-kun, and with an unprecedented six-year budget of NT$10 billion, so there is hope for improvement with regard to many fundamental problems.

But Su Cheng-tien freely admits that the Tourism Bureau is no match for those of surrounding countries whose offices in charge of tourism number their employees in the thousands. Against a background of government restructuring and personnel retrenchment, even with new budgets the Tourism Bureau has only been able to do overall planning and has been unable to attend to all the details itself. Su cites international marketing as an example. In Japan there are almost one hundred people devoted to this task, in Hong Kong three hundred, in Malaysia three hundred, and in Thailand more than one thousand, But the offices in the Taiwan Bureau of Tourism tasked with international affairs have no more than thirty employees. In fact, the whole Bureau has less than 200, less than the international departments alone in those other countries.

"You have to adapt your methods to the number of people you have. Out-sourcing contracts and working closely with local government offices, these are the kind of flexible approaches we have adopted," says Su. There are really a great many things that have to be re-done from the ground up. From overall planning at one end to the smallest little rest and relaxation pavilions at the other, all are in need of basic change.

Medium-scale theme parks have been built all over Taiwan. Entrepreneurs should think seriously about how to raise these parks to a higher level and make them attractive to international tourists.

Keeping the dream alive

But private entrepreneurs view these flexible approaches differently. Stephen Wu argues that the Tourism Bureau has invested a great deal of money in support of county governments who stage various special tourist festivals, but that after their first two years few festivals show any creativity. "The only and best criterion of success is whether or not travel agencies can put together enough people to make up a tour group," he says.

Tien Chih-cheng, Executive Director of the Taiwan Railway Joint Operations Center, which promotes tourist travel by train around Taiwan, also has strong feelings about this. He says that the Taiwan tourism industry is facing many very fundamental problems. For example, every area is competing for theme park investment. Business owners are happy to install amusement park equipment on a massive scale but their management approach lacks an international perspective. They often have nothing special to offer, and although frequently investing enormous amounts of money, they are only able to attract in-country visitors. As for overseas tourists, they don't get anywhere at all. Another example: Government offices overseeing large-scale investment projects make things too complicated. Just to build a simple vacation village you have to travel the official document route in government offices and get a hundred seals of approval attached. This kills entrepreneurial initiative.

Although they have criticisms to get off their chests, entrepreneurs are nonetheless optimistic about the plan to increase the number of tourists. "At least they are doing something," says Jane Tai.

Out of work for two months following the SARS episode, guide Daniel Mak is beginning to find himself busy again. He has his own insight on the series of blows suffered by the tourism industry over the last ten years-the missile crisis, the September 21 earthquake, the 9/11 attack in New York, the SARS epidemic.

"When I used to take out tourist groups in the past, the dilapidated state of Taiwan tourist spots always made me feel sad. But today at Sun Moon Lake the buildings on the shoreline destroyed by the September 21 earthquake are as if reborn from the ashes," he says. Last year he took a group there and the Tzuen Pagoda and the Hsuanchang Temple had been completely rebuilt. On the lakeside shrouded in mist they stood out and complemented each other. The admiring sighs of the tourists made this twenty-year veteran "feel proud of my land for the first time."

Everyone who grew during Taiwan's difficult years was probably deeply moved by the exquisite scenery of the Far East he or she saw on television and spontaneously had the feeling that he was "living in a different place." But Daniel Mak still has a vision in his heart for Taiwan's future: Eco-tourism that will deeply embed environmental protection principles in people's minds, facilitating the repopulation of the plants and insects; island-wide rail travel spurring the revival of local cultures and the railroad industry itself; regular daily performances at local theaters, with Peking Opera, Taiwanese Opera, Aboriginal dancing, and stage plays, not only attracting international friends but giving theatergoers from Taiwan a multiplicity of choices on a daily basis. . . the ideal life lies just over the horizon. An overall national reconstruction given impetus by the tourism industry sounds like a dream, but many people are hard at work turning this dream into reality bit by bit!