By The Straits Times | Created at 2026-08-17 09:47:06 | Updated at 2026-08-18 12:14:26
1 day ago
TAIPEI – Taiwanese fitness instructor Shih Yu-hsin has travelled to Japan on holiday three times over the past year. Not once did she consider vacationing within Taiwan.
The 29-year-old, who is based in Taipei, said that domestic travel costs in Taiwan often feel inflated for what is provided, especially when it comes to accommodation.
“Local hotels and bed and breakfasts in Taiwan offer such ‘low CP value’,” she said, using the popular localised slang to mean “cost-performance ratio” or “value for money”.
“I can get much better value in Japan – even the most basic lodgings there are usually cleaner and better maintained for what I am paying,” she told The Straits Times.
Many Taiwanese widely consider travelling within the island to be prohibitively expensive, with high accommodation costs cited as the primary driver, according to various surveys. The lack of novelty in attractions, featuring copy-and-paste old streets and night markets selling the same items in different cities, as well as the stress of high holiday traffic and crowded tourist hotspots were also cited as reasons.
This has pushed many Taiwanese to travel abroad if given the choice, to places such as Japan, South Korea and Thailand.
Data has shown that demand for domestic tourism has in fact expanded by 11.52 percent in 2025 to achieve a record 247.61 million trips. However, the sector faces a structural travel deficit, driven by outward-bound preferences and a tendency for local trips to remain short outings.
In 2025, Taiwanese made 18.94 million trips abroad, more than twice the 8.57 million foreign arrivals to the island in the same period. This difference of more than 10 million trips has resulted in a massive estimated deficit of NT$700.98 billion (S$28 billion) in tourism value, said the island’s Tourism Administration.
Taiwan is hoping to narrow this gap with the launch of the Taiwan Tourism Institute, a semi-official think tank dedicated to tourism policy research and development.
Its primary goal: To boost the island’s overall domestic and inbound tourism economic footprint to NT$1 trillion (S$39.7 billion) by 2030 – up from the NT$837 billion generated in 2025.
It will analyse and recommend policies to ensure local tourism is engaging and high-quality for all, and reshape Taiwan’s tourism industry holistically to move past basic visitor headcounts to focus on traveller satisfaction and quality.
At a launch event on July 22, the institute’s chair Winston Shen acknowledged the persistent complaints that the Taiwanese public have about the island’s high accommodation costs, especially during peak periods and major events.
“Many people say that accommodation rates fluctuate too greatly when there are concerts being held,” he told reporters. “Figuring out how to make consumers feel like their money is well spent is something we will work hard on.”
While official statistics showed that domestic trips increased in 2025, nearly 80 per cent of those trips were day trips, which meant that the majority of Taiwanese travellers chose not to stay overnight.
Taiwanese travellers also spend substantially more overseas than they do domestically. While they spent an average of NT$2,279 per trip domestically in 2025, they spent an average of NT$55,288 for an overseas trip, including airfare.
According to a February survey by popular Taiwanese employment portal 1111 Job Bank, more than 80 per cent of respondents said that they preferred international travel over taking domestic trips, with many citing “excessively high accommodation costs”, “price gouging” and “difficulty finding parking spots and high parking fees” in Taiwan as driving factors.
Official data showed that the average hotel room price in Taiwan in 2025 hovered around NT$3,000 per night, or around US$94. That is lower than the average price of a hotel room in Tokyo (US$200), Bangkok ($118) and Seoul ($186), according to online travel agency Hotels.com. However, analysts say that Taiwan’s figures do not reflect the dramatic price hikes during peak periods.
Li Chi-yueh, a tourism studies expert at the University of Taipei, pointed out that Taiwan’s domestic tourism demand is overly concentrated on weekends and public holidays.
“The surge in visitors during holidays and festivals drives up accommodation prices, while also causing traffic jams and long queues, resulting in a poor experience overall and a strong feeling that people are basically paying to suffer,” he said.
He suggested that local governments should try to move more events to weekdays.
Furthermore, a severe post-pandemic labour shortage in hospitality has added to the perception that Taiwan’s hotel options do not offer good value. Lodging audits revealed a persistent deficit of roughly 6,600 frontline and housekeeping workers, hurting service quality.
Taiwan’s broader service sectors also face significant labour shortfalls, heavily impacting food and drink establishments, and leisure attractions.
Shih, the pilates instructor, said: “Many hotels in Taiwan let you check in only at 4pm and then make you check out before 10 or 11am the next morning, because they do not have enough workers to clean the rooms on time. I don’t like feeling rushed during my holiday.”
To combat the tourism trade deficit, the new think-tank will also look at how to boost inbound tourism, with a target of attracting 10 million visitors annually by 2030.
Taiwan welcomed 8.57 million visitors in 2025, which is still short of the record 11.84 million logged in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic. The drop can in part be attributed to the fact that visitors from China – once the main source of inbound tourists – have dwindled as cross-strait travel has practically frozen amid heightened geopolitical tensions.
In August 2019, Beijing banned individual travel permits for Chinese visitors to the island, citing the state of relations between the two sides. Limited travel has resumed for Chinese tourists from Fujian Province to visit Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen and Matsu islands.
In recent years, Taiwan has actively broadened source markets; about 30 per cent of arrivals now hail from South-east Asia, and another 30 per cent from North-east Asian countries including Japan and South Korea. Another 20 per cent come from Hong Kong, Macau and China, and the final 20 per cent are from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
According to various surveys, foreign tourists overwhelmingly cite Taiwan’s food scene, including its night markets, as the top reason to visit and return. The island’s scenic natural beauty was also named as a major attraction, although reported drawbacks include language barriers and difficulties with local public transit or walkability outside major city centres.
“Taiwan possesses abundant natural, cultural, and industrial resources, like a rough gem that needs to be refined through professional research, talent cultivation, industrial upgrading, and international cooperation to showcase its charm to the world.” said Taiwan Premier Cho Jung-tai at the same launch event for the institute.
“Tourism is not just about travel – it is also an important industry that drives local development and showcases the nation’s soft power,” he added.
