Responding to the “New Southbound Policy” of the central government, Taichung International Airport has the goal of being an “LCC Operation Center” and expects to become the second airport for low-cost airlines. The Taichung City Government Tourism Office pointed out that VietJet Air opened “Taichung-Ho Chi Minh City” flights on January 15th, 2017 and cooperated with Mandarin Airlines in operating the airlines between Central Taiwan and Vietnam. In addition to that, Tigerair Taiwan is scheduled to operate “Taichung-Macao” flights in late March and Thai VietJet is scheduled to operate “Taichung-Bangkok” flights in late April. The city government expects that by allowing more flights for ASEAN tourists to enter Taiwan, this can promote the overall tourism development of Central Taiwan.

Director Chen Sheng-shan of the Tourism Office also stated that the city government has to take sequential steps such as tourism promotion, regional alliance cooperation, city exchanges, establish sister city relationships and others to allow Taichung International Airport to constantly add more direct flights to international cities. The Tourism Office will also continue to exploit the Singaporean and Malaysian markets and develop “one-journey multiple-stops” passengers by utilizing the international transit function of Hong Kong and its advantage of having abundant flights to and from Singapore and Malaysia in order to attract Singaporean and Malaysian tourists to visit Taichung via Hong Kong and even further extend their trip to other regions of Taiwan such as Penghu.

The Tourism Office stated that since 2015 to late April 2017, Taichung City Government has developed six international destinations, including Incheon of Seoul, Nagoya, Osaka, Oita, Nagasaki and Bangkok, alongside six cross-strait destinations, including Chengdu, Shenyang, Changzhou, Wuhan, Jieyang and Wuxi. So far, Taichung International Airport has 11 international flights and 26 cross-strait flights.

To strengthen the tourism development of Central Taiwan and to enhance the city’s international visibility, the Tourism Office finally received the central government’s approval and renamed the airport “Taichung International Airport” on January 3rd, 2017. At the same time, it coordinated with the Ministry of National Defense in reducing curfew times, so that the airport can fly 85 flights instead of the original 58 flights per day, which largely enhances the transportation volume of the airport.

The Tourism Office stated that to implement the vision and blueprint of “Greater Taichung 123” disclosed by Mayor Lin Chia-lung and to promote the regional governance of Taichung, Changhua and Nantou, it is aggressively promoting the tourism model of “entering and leaving from Central Taiwan”. On November 2015, the Taichung City Government successfully enlarged the alliance by integrating the tourism resources of the seven cities and counties of Central Taiwan and formed the “Central Taiwan Tourism Promotion Committee” in order to fully promote international inbound tourism. On March 2016, the Promotion Committee concluded a tourism and friendship exchange memorandum with the 12 Japanese prefectures of Shoryudo. This year, it will promote alliances with the tourism promotion institutes of Kitakyushu and Tohoku of Japan and expects to increase regional tourism with bicycle and hot spring themed tours, alongside with a Taichung International Dance Parade & Festival, lantern festival and other events.

The Tourism Office also brought about a regular chartered flight between Taichung and Oita on September 15th, 2016 and assisted in helping Taichung International Airport and Nagoya international Airport build a friendship between each other, which are scheduled to become sister airports in late March of 2017. In the future, both airports will continue to enhance service exchanges and technical cooperation to improve their service quality. The city government will also coordinate airline companies to run the regularly chartered flights between Taichung and Nagoya and encourage them to run regular flights.

In the future, the Tourism Office will target tourists from central Korea, such as Daegu, Daejeon, Gwangju, Cheongju, Busan and other places. Through sport, ecology, culture & creativity, eSport and other exchanges, it hopes to enhance the chances of having regular chartered flights between Taichung and those places.