Kenting attracting more HK, Singapore visitors

“In addition to backpackers, the number of tourists arriving as families and those traveling on ecological and in-depth tours from Hong Kong has also increased since late last year,” said Apple Sun, who is in charge of public relations at the Howard Beach Resort Kenting hotel.

She added that this was a result of information about Kenting's beautiful natural scenery that was widely disseminated on the Internet, on Hong Kong TV channels and in local magazines. Cantonese, rather than Japanese, is now the foreign language most often heard on Kenting's streets, according to local hoteliers.

Kuo Shih-he, a public relations staffer at the Chateau Beach Resort, said that “the number of Hong Kong tourists staying at the hotel so far this year has grown by about 30 percent over the same period of last year, while the 2008 number was also some 30 percent higher than the 2007 level.”

Large parts of “Cape No. 7” — the best-selling Taiwanese movie in history — was filmed at the Chateau. Staff at two other hotels in the area — the Howard Beach Resort Kenting and the Caesar Park Hotel Kenting — have also noticed the room-occupancy effects of “Cape No. 7.”

They said the movie has apparently helped bring in more visitors from Hong Kong to Kenting in recent months, with many college and senior high school students visiting the local beaches in groups of three or four.

Meanwhile, more Singaporean tourists have also been drawn to Kenting, they noted.

Visitors from Hong Kong and Singapore visiting Kenting are usually also interested in buying local speciality foods as gift items for relatives and friends at home.

Most Hong Kong tourists tend to buy locally made pineapple cakes, dried pork and dried bean curd, while onion cakes are also very popular, as Pingtung is Taiwan's leading production area for high-quality onions.

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