Taipei City was presented with a 2013 Travelers’ Choice Destinations award July 19 by the world’s largest travel site TripAdvisor, the city government said.
TripAdvisor ranked Taipei as No. 13 in its list of Asia’s favorite holiday destinations, according to Chao Hsin-ping, commissioner of the city’s Department of Information and Tourism. She received the award on behalf of the city from Cindy Tan, TripAdvisor’s vice president of Display Advertising Sales, Asia-Pacific.
Taipei has worked hard in recent years to improve the quality of its travel-related services and facilities, Chao said. The city placed six notches higher than last year, putting it solidly in the ranks of the world’s favorite destinations and showing that these efforts have paid off, Chao said.
The ranking system used by TripAdvisor is different from ordinary online voting systems, Tan said. It is based on reviews posted at TripAdvisor by over 1 million travelers who actually visited the places surveyed, making the awards the most accurate indicators of traveler sentiment, she added.
Among the reasons for Taipei's ranking is that its facilities and services received high marks from TripAdvisor reviewers, Tan said, adding that she looks forward to closer interaction between TripAdvisor, Taipei City Government and its Taipei Travel Net website.
Chao said that since Taipei Travel Net exchanged links with TripAdvisor in April 2012, the number of visitors to the website has jumped by 2.23 million, or 40 percent, year on year to break the 10 million mark. The number of visitors from January to June this year was 27 percent higher than the same period last year, and the website received 260,000 visits in June, breaking the record for a single month, she added.
These figures underline the effectiveness of the city’s cooperative relationship with TripAdvisor, Chao said.
Taipei Travel Net released the same day a new do-it-yourself trip planner application, helping visitors better explore Taipei. The DOIT said the app, available in English and Chinese, includes such features as cloud-computing trip planning, sharing of good trips and trip tailoring.
