Present recently in Bangkok during the TITF, the travel fair organized by Thailand association of Travel Agents, Taiwan farms were displaying their products, from visiting farms, helping farmers and spending a holiday as a guest.
BANGKOK – The initiative of promotion Taiwan’s farms as tourism attractions for domestic and international visitors comes from Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture (COA). The council sees the promotion a complement activity to agriculture. Tourism could indeed help generate revenue of NT$11 billion (US$36.3 million) in the sector in 2014. In a recent report, the COA said it plans to build up Taiwan’s agricultural parks to attract more local and international visitors to the country’s farms.
Parks will offer edutainment tours, integrating not only the farm itself but also turning some of them into tourist resorts. It will also help to diversify farms products and open unknown areas and districts to new activities –of which tourism would bring an opening to the world.
Recently, Taiwan Premier Jiang Yi-huah said he recognized the COA’s efforts in the area of leisure farm tourism and hopes the council can revise the relevant regulations and improve management in the industry to help revive the rural economy.
Farm tourism is already very popular in Taiwan. According to numbers provided by the COA, the total number of yearly visitors went up from 9.59 million in 2008 to 20 million in 2013. Taiwan tourism bureau already offers rural tours to Hualien and Taitung. They attracted in 2013 slightly over 1.2 million visitors.
From that total figure, foreign visitors accounted only for 260,000 visits, however up by almost five times compared to 2008 (64,000 foreign visitors that year).
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
