Taiwan Tourism Bureau Research Articles

Preparing for a future crisis: using DEA-based performance analysis to assess initial pandemic responses in the Taiwanese hotel industry

PurposeTaiwan’s hotel industry was adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to examine the effect of strategic choices by Taiwanese international tourist hotels before and during the pandemic environments.Design/methodology/approachA data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based Malmquist methodology is used in this study to provide a mechanism to assess Taiwanese hotel strategy performance. Changes in the productivity and performance of Taiwanese international tourist hotels were analyzed in the periods before and during the pandemic to uncover insights useful should a similar crisis occur in the future. Panel data were obtained from the annual report of international tourist hotels published by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau from 2017–2020. Two groups of hotels were analyzed in this study: city hotels and scenic hotels.FindingsThe findings of this study reveal that chain hotels tended to perform better than independent hotels in both city and scenic areas during the global pandemic. Specifically, the crisis caused a substantial decline in productivity and profitability for international tourist hotels in Taipei City during the COVID-19 period. Compared to city hotels, findings also indicate that most international tourist hotels in scenic areas were able to maintain better productivity, including larger-sized scenic hotels.Originality/valueThe DEA-based analysis provides unique and valuable insights for hotel firm leaders on how to better identify and make strategic choices when responding to future crises.

The impact of border control policy on tourists’ behaviors in Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic

In response to the global pandemic of the COVID-19 outbreak, Taiwan barred foreign nationals from entering into Taiwan starting from March 19th, 2020. This study aims to explore the impact of lockdown policy on the length of stay, tourism expenditure, tourist satisfaction and revisit intention based on a sample of 3987 inbound visitors collected from the 2020 Annual Survey Report on Visitor Expenditures and Trends, published by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau. The empirical results indicate that: (1) the border control policy increases the length of stay of around 33.4719 nights; (2) a drop of the total expenditure, F&B expenditure, transportation expenditure, entertainment expenditure, and shopping expenditure but an increase of accommodation expenditure is found; (3) the border control policy seems to reduce the level of tourist satisfaction but does not affect revisit intention.

Dim-Sum Over Milk Tea: Taiwan’s 21st Century Gastrodiplomacy and Some Lessons for the Philippines

Gastrodiplomacy is said to have emerged in Asia as an attempt by an Asian country to differentiate its unique flavor that is often mistaken to be that of a neighboring country. Even before the term gastrodiplomacy was coined, countries have practiced this approach to establish a national identity. Taiwan's Tourism Bureau officially started to emphasize food as a means of attraction in 2009. Although Taiwan's gastrodiplomacy is known as "dim-sum diplomacy," pearl milk tea is also listed under the "snack and beverages” category of Taiwan food for tourists.
 Tea, on the other hand, is a pivotal part of Asian history, particularly in its economic aspect. For instance, Taiwan’s tropical weather combined with elevated terrains allows the state to produce tea. It was in the early 1980s when the beverage was reinvented - cold and mixed with sweetened tapioca pudding. Thus, the first milk tea was served in Taiwan.
 The present generation of Filipinos, through a survey conducted, acknowledged milk tea as a product of Taiwan, as Taiwanese milk tea stores also multiplied in the Philippines. Unlike dim-sum, which the Filipinos attribute as Chinese, Filipinos recognize milk tea as a product of Taiwan.
 With this, it is recommended that Taiwan highlights milk tea in its gastrodiplomacy campaign to contribute to the recognition and preservation of “Taiwan cuisine-consciousness.” The Philippines can also learn from this diplomatic strategy in hopes of joining its neighboring countries in the great practice of gastrodiplomacy.
 References
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台灣2019高雄內門宋江陣活動之經濟效益分析

Since 2001, Taiwan Tourism Bureau (MOTC) has entitled the Neimen Songjiang Battle Array as one of the 12 major festivals in Taiwan. It celebrated the 19th year of its annual festival last year (2019) and has become a local traditional iconic activity in Kaohsiung. In this paper, a questionnaire survey was conducted on the “2019 Kaohsiung Neimen Songjiang Battle Array Festival” as a research object to understand the economic benefits brought about by the festival activities. The result indicates that the 9-day long Kaohsiung Neimen Songjiang Battle Array Festival 2019 attracted 119,385 visitors and resulted in an estimate of direct visitor expenditures of NTD 217,048,386, bringing the most impressive and direct benefits of tourism to Neimen area, a small town with only 14,000 people. The grant for this event was NTD 9.5 million in total, with NTD 2.5 million funded from the Taiwan central subsidy and NTD 7 million funded from the Kaohsiung City Government. A total of NTD 9.5 million created NTD 217 million in economic benefits and the benefit ratio was 22.85 times, showing Kaohsiung Neimen Songjiang Battle Array Festival, an important local festival event has successfully promoted the local economic development of Kaohsiung.

Data Preprocessing: Case Study on monthly number of visitors to Taiwan by their residence and purpose

This paper will explain in details on data reports preliminary on dataset, how the pre-processing data mainly for data cleaning and reduction process applied to a dataset. The dataset that will be used is number of visitors to Taiwan by their residence and purpose.Dataset which is obtained based on kaggle, findings from Scraped from Taiwan Tourism Bureau. The surveys have been carried out using Foreign visitor data covers all foreign visitors directly arrived in Taiwan through the airports, ports and land.

Forecasting tourism demand by incorporating neural networks into Grey–Markov models

Tourism demand plays a significant role in the formulation of tourism development policies by governments. While the GM(1,1) is the most frequently used grey prediction model, the Grey–Markov model has been applied to forecast tourism demand because it has advantages compared with the GM(1,1) model when the time series data fluctuate significantly. To further improve the predictive accuracy of the Grey–Markov model, two neural networks (NNs) are considered. One of the NNs is used to build an NNGM(1,1) such that the GM(1,1) does not need to determine the background value, and the other is used to estimate the degree to which a predicted value obtained from the NNGM(1,1) can be adjusted. We applied the proposed model to forecast the number of foreign tourists using historical annual data from Taiwan Tourism Bureau and China National Tourism Administration. The results showed that the proposed model outperforms other Grey–Markov models.

The moderating effects of travel arrangement types on tourists' formation of Taiwan's unique image

Image of a destination influences tourists' perceptions and evaluations of that destination. The current study aims to investigate the formation of Taiwan's unique image from the perspective of travel arrangement types. Analyzing survey data from the Taiwan Tourism Bureau, the study finds that unique image formation is moderated by type of travel arrangement. For group inclusive tourists, induced and organic information and experiential variety are image drivers, whereas cost efficiency is an image inhibitor. For free independent tourists, organic information, pre-tour planning horizon, experiential variety, and friendliness satisfaction are image drivers, whereas repeat visitation and time efficiency are inhibitors. Regarding tourist nationality, Chinese free independent tourists perceived Taiwan's unique image as above average, whereas Japanese tourists generally perceived Taiwan's unique image as below average. This study offers several implications for destination management organizations and travel agencies seeking to formulate effective policies and strategies.

Predicting Foreign Tourists for the Tourism Industry Using Soft Computing-Based Grey–Markov Models

Accurate prediction of foreign tourist numbers is crucial for each country to devise sustainable tourism development policies. Tourism time series data often have significant temporal fluctuation, so Grey–Markov models based on a grey model with a first order differential equation and one variable, GM(1,1), can be appropriate. To further improve prediction accuracy from Grey–Markov models, this study incorporates soft computing techniques to estimate a modifiable range for a predicted value, and determine individual state bounds for the Markov chain. A new residual value is formulated by summing the transition probability matrices with different steps. The proposed grey prediction model was applied to foreign tourist forecasting using historical annual data collected from Taiwan Tourism Bureau and China National Tourism Administration. The experimental results show that the proposed grey prediction model performs well in comparison with other Grey–Markov models considered.

Applying Difference in Difference Method to Value Policy Effect on Hotel Industry

This study applies Difference in Difference (DiD) method to evaluate the policy effect on hotel industry. This study uses the International Tourism Hotels (ITHs) in Taiwan as the subjects. The operational and managerial data of ITHs are collected from the reports by Taiwan Tourism Bureau. The data contained 70 hotel units from year 2005 to 2010. In 2008, the government relaxed the entrance limitation for the tourists from China and the number of inbound visitors has been increasing tremendously. However, our research results indicate that the open policy for visitors from China have no significant positive effect on the profitability of ITHs. Tourism policies can lead to unexpected results to different tourism industry with different operational scale, which should be taken into consideration when making business strategies or governmental policies.

How demand uncertainty and market concentration affect long-term price instability

The object of this paper was to investigate the long-term influences of demand uncertainty and market concentration on price instability in the hotel industry. We applied 1996–2008 price and room revenue data collected by Taiwan's Tourism Bureau to test the following two hypotheses: (1) demand uncertainty is negatively associated with price instability in the hotel industry; (2) the market concentration is negatively associated with hotel price instability. We constructed a two-stage price instability model and the estimate results produced the following two findings: First, the uncertainty in room demand significantly contributed to the price instability. Second, the effects of market structure on price instability were heterogeneous across different levels of price instability distribution. Notably, when the distribution of price instability moved from lower to higher quantiles, the relationship between market concentration and price instability altered from positive to negative.

Business Diversification in the Hotel Industry: A Comparative Advantage Analysis

The accepted norm of hotels generating the highest portion of revenue from their room sales does not apply in the case of Taiwan. International tourist hotels in Taiwan tend to diversify their business by expanding their food and beverage (F&B) services. According to international tourist hotels' financial statements for 1996–2008 (published by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau), almost 60% generate higher revenue from their F&B services. Drawing on the concept of comparative advantage, this study assumes that a hotel's comparative advantage depends on evaluating the profitability between the F&B departments and the lodging departments. The authors propose a simultaneous equation model with qualitative and limited dependent variables, drawing on the interactions between hotel profitability and revenue structure. The empirical results show that hotels in which F&B services contribute the majority of the revenue have a profitability advantage.

Cross-Cultural Comparsion of International Tourist Destination Images

The researchers undertook an empirical examination of the tourist images of Taiwan prior to and after visiting a Taiwanese tourist night market. A survey was distributed at Shilin night Market and generated 230 responses from Japanese, 171 from US/Canadian, and 95 from Mandarin-speaking Chinese tourists. The data analysis indicated significant differences between the trip characteristics of respondents from the three groups. The images held by visitors from Japan and Hong Kong/Macau/China were found to be more positive after than before they visited the night market. However, the tourism images held by visitors from the US and Canada were the same after as before visiting. The results indicated that the changes between induced (before the trip) and complex tourism images (after the trip) varied on the basis of nationality, age, occupation, education, and income. The researchers suggest that the Taiwan Tourism Bureau and organizations associated with the tourist night market should implement marketing strategies targeted at international tourists, including promotion and product development, on the basis of their nationality and/or cultural background.

The relationship between leader-member relations, job satisfaction and organizational commitment in international tourist hotels in Taiwan

The tourism industry is an indicator of the degree of internationalization and modernization of a country; and hotels are a key part in the tourism industry. According to studies on foreign tourists to Taiwan, expenses for international hotels make up the major portion of the tourists' total costs. Hence, international hotels play a significant role in the industry. The population for this study is 60 international hotels approved by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau. The sample is formed by 24 of these hotels. A questionnaire survey was conducted and 303 valid replies were received. The research analyzes cause and effect relationships among leader-member relations, as well as organizational commitment and job satisfaction utilizing structural equation modeling. The results show that job satisfaction is the mediating variable between organization commitment and leader-member relations.

Taiwan's Hotel Rating System

This study applies content analysis to compare four hotel rating systems, in the United Kingdom, United States, China, and Taiwan as well as to compare the evaluating methods and service-quality measurement of the four hotel rating systems. Focusing on Taiwan's newly revised hotel-evaluation schema, the study analyzes the Criteria of Hotel Service Quality Evaluation established by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau in the light of the five SERVQUAL dimensions. Though Taiwan's hotel rating system is strong on assurance and tangibles, the study suggests that the system would be made more effective by adding factors for reliability, responsiveness, and empathy. Surveys should also be conducted on an ongoing basis to clarify and incorporate consumer viewpoints and to keep hotel rating systems updated. These measures would also increase acceptance and recognition of the hotel rating system by consumers.

Shopping and Tourist Night Markets in Taiwan

From theoretical viewpoints, analyses of consumer motivation have been applied to the shopping and the tourism industry for decades. However, little research has been done on night markets or street vendors. According to the Statistical Information of Taiwan Tourism Bureau (2002 annual survey report on R.O.C. inbound travelers, Taipei, Tourism Bureau, 2003), Tourist Night Markets ranked among the top three most popular sight-seeing spots for tourists spending their leisure time in Taiwan. The objectives of this study are to understand tourists’ motivations and their preferred leisure activities when they shop in Tourist Night Markets.With respect to the research methodology, this study employs an exploratory research style and adopts a convenience sampling method. The unit of analysis is the Hong Kong Chinese visitor. According to the research results, novelty-seeking, exercising and experiencing local culture and customs are the major factors that motivate tourists to shop in Tourist Night Markets. The results are: eating out overwhelmingly dominated the leisure activities (88.5%), followed by everyday shopping (56%), and novelty-seeking (32%). Existing problems in Taiwan Tourist Night Markets perceived by Hong Kong visitors are theft, parking and traffic issues. Suggestions for relevant governmental and city authorities are provided and research implications and limitations are also addressed.