Department of Information and Tourism, Taipei City Government

In 2015, there were around 9,950,000 tourists visited Taipei city. Among these around 1,550,000 tourists were from Japan, which is second largest source for Taipei’s inbound marketing. According to Japan’s Educational Tour Institute, Taiwan has become the number one choice among oversea countries for Japanese school trip and Taipei is the must-visit city when coming to Taiwan. In order to attract more Japanese youth students coming to Taipei, Department of Information and Tourism, Taipei City Government has published the “School Trip Handbook” on November of last year (2015). First 30,000 printings have been widespread praised. This year, Department of Information and Tourism will be marketing on teenagers market, cooperated with famous Japanese photographer Ninagawa Mika to promote Taipei tourism.
According to Yu-yen CHIEN, commissioner of Department of Information and Tourism, Taipei City Government, Taipei’s oversea marketing is still focusing on Asian countries and will be heavily targeting on Japanese, Korean, Singaporean, Malaysian and Muslim tourists. Meanwhile, promoting Taipei to Japanese school trip is not only benefiting Taiwan’s tourism, but also allowing youth students from both countries to interact, hence to allow them to have better international viewpoints. In recent years, total number of school trips coming to Taipei has been increasing for at least 20 % each year. In 2014, there were 156,783 Japanese students went overseas for school trip. Among those, 28,314 came to Taipei, which was the most popular destination, 19,064 went to Malaysia, 18,957 went to Singapore, 18,134 went to Australia and 10,661 went to Hawaii. Taiwan is the favorite destination for Japanese students’ school trips. Eight travel agencies that worked with Taipei City Government, Holidays, JTB, SET, Sanpu Travel Industry, Kai-Fa Travel Service, New Sunshine Travel Service, Star Express and International Tour Operation will bring estimated 30,000 tourists. Assuming each tourist will stay at an average of 4.2 days, this will bring at least 700,000,000 NTD revenue to Taipei.
On October of each year to March of the following year is the peak season for Japanese school trips. During this time, there are a lot of Japanese high school student with uniforms visit each attractions with happy faces on Taipei streets. These students often have great memories. One student notes that, one time some students in his group forgot their belongings at a hotel. Hotel staffs had carefully kept their belongings and had brought them to the airport before students left Taiwan. The kindness of Taiwanese really touched their heart. Some school trip groups will be assigned Japanese-speaking college students to be tour guides by travel agencies. These college students often exchange gifts with Japanese students; some of them even bring them to the airport. Moreover, when these college students visit Japan, they will go visit those Japanese students they guided. This expresses the kindness and friendliness of Taiwanese.
Travel agency JTB, which specialized in arranging Japanese school trips, notes that most of student coming to Taiwan for school trips are high school students, some of them are junior high school students. They all have great impression of Taipei. Travel agencies often receive thank you letters from Japanese schools. This shows that Taipei City is, besides promoting tourism, paying close attention to make sure teachers and students coming to Taiwan are happy and entertained; and more importantly, make sure they are safe and comfortable; hence to increase Taipei’s charm and popularity. CHIEN emphasizes, Taipei has many elements which is suitable for school trip. Such as safe tourism environment, friendly and hospitable residences, clear and understandable signs, English and Japanese speaking students, etc. Department of Information and Tourism wish that the relationship between Taiwan and Japan will be closer through interaction between Taiwanese and Japanese students. In the future, the Department of Information and Tourism will continuously work on Japanese school trips and teenagers tourists market, in order to promote Taipei tourism. Furthermore, in 2016 famous Japanese photographer Ninagawa Mika will cooperate with Taipei City Government to promote Taipei and attract more young Japanese tourist coming to Taipei.