🇹🇼Consumers in January=Domestic tourism goes Upmarket|New Year snacks| No more Snail Noodles
Taiwan Consumers in January-Monthly Update
Taiwan consumer confidence is currently at a 13 year-low and GDP growth for 2022, was 2.43%, missing annual target of 3.06%. Nevertheless, the Lunar New Year occurs this year in January, traditionally one of the peaks for the retail and travel sectors, so still a busy month.
Taking a look at what happened in the last month.
Three years of the pandemic drove an upgrade in domestic tourism quality and budgets
Pre-Pandemic, traveling in Taiwan had fallen out of fashion. The reason for this was that costs were high and the tourism sector was focused on cookie-cutter group tours and the options of services, lodging, and itineraries offered were unimaginative and of poor quality. It became cheaper to travel to Okinawa for a week including flights than go to the marquee beach location Kenting for the same time period.
Since March 2020 and the COVID outbreak, Taiwanese have been unable to easily travel abroad and instead chose to travel domestically. A new report from LNData shows that this has led to an upgrade in Taiwan domestic tourism and both tourists’ expectations and budgets.
Self-guided tours are now the most popular option. According to the tourist bureau statistics. In 2021, as many as 92.9% of tourists chose to arrange their own itinerary. There are now more options for tourism that foster a deeper connection to the local culture, especially those related to food and agriculture, and local traditions.
At the higher end, domestic consumers are willing to spend on quality. An LNData survey found that 20.3% of the respondents with a monthly income of more than NT$ 80,000 have a daily travel budget of more than NT$ 7,000, and 8.9% are willing to spend more than NT$ 10,000 per person per day on domestic travel.Lunar New Year Snacks: Taiwanese are crazy for nuts but can live without sweet peanuts
A January report from Kantar surveyed Taiwanese on their favorite snacks for the Lunar New Year. 64% of respondents said that nuts are a ‘must-buy’ for families during the holidays, making them the top holiday snack. Seeds followed at no.2, with 50% of respondents buying every year.
The least popular traditional lunar new year snacks are sugar-coated peanuts and winter melon candies, which only got a positive response from over-55s.Propaganda on packaging forces government ban on Snail Noodles from China
The Bureau of Economic Affairs announced that Snail rice noodles(螺螄粉) which are imported from China, must be removed from store shelves in retail stores and e-commerce platforms. Snail rice noodles are very popular on e-commerce platforms such as Shopee and can be found in physical retailers such as Cosmed and Family Mart.
The reason for the ban was that Chinese manufacturers were taking advantage of the noodle’s popularity by emblazing them with propaganda messages. The highlighted section on the pictured package reads ‘"You are Chinese, and I'm Chinese too, you belong to me”.
