TTA is willing and ready to offer all possible assistance and welcome to Indian MICE groups if they decide to come to Taiwan to host their events – Noel Saxena
One of the Asian Tigers that has developed into a high-income economy, Taiwan is keen to grow its Travel & Tourism sector, laying particular focus on the high-yield MICE and incentives sectors. The island nation is keen to recoup its pre-Covid Travel & Tourism market share and has set an aggressive target of 10 million foreign tourist arrivals for 2024. Taiwan received almost 11.8 million visitors in pre-Covid 2019, which was its record year.
With its eyes set on recovery and given the country’s highly developed MICE infrastructures like state-of-the-art Convention and Exhibition halls, modern well-equipped large inventory hotels with ample meeting space of its own, Taiwan Tourism Administration (TTA), the National Tourism office, is keen to build a robust and thriving Incentives sector in Indian market.
According to Joseph Cheng, Director, TTA Singapore Office, responsible for the Indian market, “In the dynamic and ever-evolving global businesses and their practices, travel for meeting, conferences, conventions and congresses as well as the rewarding ‘incentives’ travel has become a new normal and are often outpacing the traditional business travel. And therefore, we are keen to develop the sector. Besides, India has over 27 million outbound travel market and more than 41 per cent of them travel for leisure and recreation and another 16 per cent for business purposes. And that I think is the overall MICE share of Indian outbound. It’s also one of the fastest growing large economies as well as one the fastest growing outbound travel market and therefore has a wonderful and growing MICE market. We are keen to establish ourselves as a preferred Incentives travel destination in the eyes of Indian travellers.”
Furthermore, Cheng said, “Taiwan’s talent pool of stakeholders in the value chain is second to none. We have agencies, aggregators and event management companies, who can not only develop great events, handle complex travel logistics, create delightful gourmet experiences and build amazing entertainment-filled evenings, but can also offer customised travel solutions, seamless event planning with personalised services, technology integration, and so much more.”
Taiwan is one of the few economies in Asia which is not only ‘developed’ but is also a highly ‘advanced’ economy. Besides, as a ‘destination’, Taiwan’s tourism sector is equally diverse. And therefore, is an unbeatable destination for not just meetings and conferences, but also incentives trips.
Commenting on Taiwan’s attractiveness as an incentives travel destination, TTA Representative in India and Blink Brand CEO, Noel Saxena, said, “Taiwan has most modern and state-of-the-art convention centres and many large inventory hotels that also boasts of advanced meeting space and modern technology support to offer memorable once-in-a-lifetime corporate meeting experiences. Whether large international conferences with delegates flying in from across the world to small corporate meetings that need to be integrated with leisure and entertainment, Taiwan beats the best with its exceptional services.”
And that’s not all. Saxena also said that the NTO is willing and ready to offer all possible assistance and welcome to such groups if they decide to come to Taiwan to host their events.
As one of the leading DMCs in Taiwan, in operation since 1988, Edison Travel has been working the Indian market for more than two decades. Paul HSIEH, well familiar with the Indian market, says, “Our focus is on the English-speaking market which is the Indian market also. We have been working hard, since around the year 2000, to bring more Indian guests to Taiwan be for incentives or MICE travel, and even for group, family and FIT travel. We have enough Indian restaurants and today Indians can visit Taiwan without worrying about their food and vegetarian preferences. Besides, we have a team prepped and prepared to patiently work with our Indian guests to give them a memorable experience of their Taiwan visit and are fully satisfied with our services.”
