News
Hualien-Taitung Agricultural Tour Fun – 'Let's Search for Ingredients' Trip launched on July 5th
The Council of Agriculture launched a series of trips on July 5 th which feature a search for special ingredients from 10 important agricultural towns in Hualien and Taitung County.
The Hualien-Taitung Agricultural Tour Fun – “Let’s Search for Ingredients” Trip, which runs from July 5 th until February 16 th next year, includes 80 “treasure hunt locations”, including leisure farms, leisure agricultural areas, rural communities, local farmers’ associations and retail locations for agricultural products.
A spokesperson for the COA said that in recent years “traveling in local areas, eating authentic food” has become a popular trend. The COA assisted 10 townships in Hualien and Taitung in the design of different travel experiences based on special local feathers. The featured travel adventures include ecological observations, farm visits, processing of agricultural products, creatively-styled meals and unique souvenirs.
Through these traveling experiences, the COA hopes to let tourists experience quality food, and to learn the stories behind this cuisine.
Tourists could transplant rice, husk rice, catch golden clams, pick organic fruits and vegetables and have other interesting experiences.
The COA has also added treasure hunting to the travel fun. Tourists who collect stickers by purchasing products from at least 3 of the 80 locations qualify to exchange the stickers for a limited creative cultural product, and can also participate in a prize drawing.
The COA also held a ballot on their website in order to select the top 10 creatively-styled meals and gifts; tourists could go to this website to learn more:
http://tourno9.coa.gov.tw/agrotour/
The COA enticed 1,700,000 tourists to travel to Hualien and Taitung in a 5-month period last year, which resulted in an additional NT$ 2.3 billion revenue for the local economy, an increase of 67.9% over the previous year.
Since the event is longer duration this year, officials of the COA expect optimistically that the activity will attract 1,800,000 tourists, and they also predicted it will realize a total value of more than NT$ 2.5 billion.
