These indulgences are becoming a popular treat among local travelers with the rise of new and stylish home-stay facilities throughout the island.
In the past, Taiwan’s home-stays, mostly located in popular tourist sites, were essentially bed-and-breakfast arrangements offered by families looking to earn extra income with the spare rooms in their homes. But in the late 1990s, a group of aspiring entrepreneurs began to offer a different kind of accommodation from the standardized services seen at hotels and the makeshift lodging of traditional home-stays, according to Winter Chiang, a well-known expert in this emerging field.
“After nearly a decade of development, Taiwan’s home-stays have become an attraction themselves and a burgeoning sub-sector of the local tourism industry,” Chiang said.
The country’s first dedicated home-stays appeared in the southern vacation destination Kenting in the late 1990s. The craze gradually spread to the northeastern county of Yilan and finally became a national sensation in around 2003 when luxurious European-style guesthouses started clustering in Cingjing Farm in central Taiwan.
“Business has been doing so well that media in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia have begun to report on this phenomenon,” Chiang noted.
Since the Regulations for the Management of Home-Stay Facilities took effect in December 2001, the number of such boarding establishments in the country has nearly tripled. Official statistics by the Tourism Bureau under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications show that, as of August 2009, there were over 2,800 registered guesthouses offering more than 11,000 rooms on Taiwan proper and the outlying islands of Penghu, Kinmen and Green Island.
Unlike traditional, family-owned operations, most boarding facilities in recent times are run by dedicated hosts.
“These new entrepreneurs themselves had a lot of personal experiences with home-stays in foreign countries as independent travelers,” Chiang said, after visiting more than 500 such establishments on the island since 2003. He has published several books based on the results of his field study and is often invited to give lectures and speeches on related topics.
“The distinctive appeal of Taiwan’s home-stays is that they offer visitors an opportunity to interact with their hosts and to immerse themselves in the local lifestyles of the places they are visiting,” Chiang noted.
These business operators come from all walks of life, including former high-tech professionals, hoteliers and medical doctors. Many opted to become a host to fulfill their dreams of living an idyllic life, while others aspire to put their entrepreneurial spirit to work. The new blood adds to the diversity of the sector, as the designs and decorations of the facilities inherently reflect home-stay hosts’ tastes and lifestyles, “which are the major selling points of these new ventures,” the expert pointed out.
To Tiffany Lin, her booming lodging business started eight years ago with a modest dream of running a small cafe in the countryside. But over the years, her two guesthouses in central and northern Taiwan, co-founded by her and a friend, have become highly sought-after refuges from the hustle and bustle of modern urban life.
“To me, home-stay is a way of life,” the businesswoman said. With adequate funding, anyone can build eye-catching accommodation facilities, but what really touches visitors’ hearts is home-stay hosts’ efforts and commitment to creating a one-of-a-kind lodging experience, she said.
“What separates a home-stay from a hotel is the dedication and devotion of the host, and visitors can sense these things.” As a matter of fact, many of her guests keep coming back just to spend time there bathing in the relaxing atmosphere Lin works hard to create.
Despite the rosy outlook ahead, Chiang offered a word of caution to prospective hosts. “I have seen too many people jump on the bandwagon without thinking their decision through. Without proper financial planning or a clear vision, these aspiring entrepreneurs often end up putting their businesses up for sale,” he noted.
The biggest problem most guesthouse hosts face is the generally low occupancy rate, said Su Cherng-tyan, dean of the College of Tourism at Chung Hwa University in northern Taiwan. According to official statistics, for the first half of the year, Taiwan’s home-stays averaged only an 18-percent occupancy rate. While business may be good on weekends, many home-stays find it hard to attract visitors during weekdays.
“This is due mainly to the fact that people on the island usually take their vacations on weekends,” said the former director-general of the MOTC’s Tourism Bureau.
The fundamental challenge is to help build a strong emotional attachment on the part of guests by offering them a memorable lodging experience, so that they will keep generating return business and referrals. “Some guesthouses are fully booked even during weekdays, while others find themselves unable to find visitors even on weekends. This is something to think about,” Su noted.
Another solution is to find new clients from outside the country. “Unlike locals who are usually time-constrained, foreign travelers can fill the vacancies during weekdays,” Su said.
Lin Chia-min, a home-stay host from Yilan, concurred. “In any given month of the year, a country from somewhere is on a long holiday,” he noted. “If local operators can figure out a way to capitalize on these opportunities, they can turn every month into a high month,” he pointed out. A winning approach is a travel plan that covers visits to the metropolitan areas over weekends and the unique experience of home-stays during weekdays, Lin suggested.
According to a study by two local scholars, 30 percent of local home-stays said that foreign visitors accounted for 30 percent of their guests. In light of this finding, the government has started to lend a helping hand to local operators by putting them in touch with international travel fairs. About 100 home-stay hosts from 15 regions are also in the process of pooling their resources to integrate their marketing efforts.
Su stressed the importance of highlighting the unique appeal of Taiwan’s home-stays in international marketing. “We have so much to offer other than the landmark attractions like the Alishan National Scenic Area and Taipei 101. Taiwan’s home-stays are a great venue of cultural exchanges for foreign visitors, and may well be the next growth driver of the country’s tourism industry,” he said. (SFC-HZW)
Write to Meg Chang at meg.chang@mail.gio.gov.tw