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The purpose of this Editorial is to introduce the current tourism and hospitality research interesting topics in Taiwan.

Introduces the papers in this special issue.

All of these papers explore the issues concerning Taiwan tourism development. The entries cover Northern Taiwan, two from Middle Taiwan, and two from Southern Taiwan. That duly indicates tourism study, in terms of quantity and quality, comes from all over Taiwan.

This Taiwan special issue is a touchstone to initiate more tourism journals to be published by the Taiwan special issue in the near future.

The paper seeks to examine nature‐based tourism (NBT) impacts from business managers' perceptions in economic, cultural and environmental aspects and understands the relationship among socio‐demographic characteristics, type and level of involvement and participants' perception of impacts.

The paper uses social exchange theory to explain costs/benefits in each aspect. Several indicators including social‐demographic characteristics, attitudes toward the government, types and level of involvement are used to analyze costs/benefits of tourism impacts.

NBT has a moderate impact on participants' business – contributing approximately 30 per cent of their annual sales and 31 per cent of customers. Business managers believe benefits to the social/cultural environment are the most apparent impact in I‐Lan, followed by economic benefits. Participants believe that county government does well in tourism planning, and they believe that they could influence county government's tourism planning.

Tourism related businesses are purposely chosen for this study. Thus, the findings cannot be inferred to a larger population.

The findings support the usefulness of social exchange theory in costs/benefits aspects. County government might change its role from top‐down decision‐making style to co‐partner with local business people.

The paper provides insights into understanding of business managers' perceived impacts. Therefore, county tourism planners and researchers can have a more efficient and holistic management of NBT in the region.

The paper aims to differentiate the differences of both night market experience and image between temporary residents and foreign visitors in Taiwan and to explore the relationship between experience and image.

Night market experiences comprise the dimensions of Schmitt's experiential marketing theory and night market image is analyzed by exploratory factor analysis. This research probes the socio‐demographics differences of experience and image between temporary residents and foreign visitors. Canonical analysis explores the experience‐image relationships.

Some socio‐demographics have relativity differences in night market experiences and images. Visitors have stronger thinking experience than temporary residents. Temporary residents have stronger image in atmosphere, while foreign visitors have general stronger images than temporary residents. Canonical analysis shows that visitors have stronger relationships between experience and image than temporary residents.

Marketing organizations must develop marketing strategies specific to cultural background and the length of residence of its specific visitors.

The paper provides the evidence showing that familiarity and novelty‐seeking would be of particular importance to examine whether experience and image are equally applicable to the various foreign visitors.

The paper research objectives are: to investigate into the classification of special interest tour preferences in terms of their types and to compare whether consumers with different demographic attributes result in discrepancies in special interest tour preferences.

Those collected questionnaires that had incomplete answers and that had a significant response tendency or were left blank with no answers were eliminated. The required statistical methods are explained thus: this study conducts analysis on special interest tour preferences by factor analysis to distinguish between the categories of special interest tour preferences; this study adopts correlation analysis to examine the ratio scale of the study's demographic variables, including age and education level; this study adopts one‐way ANOVA to examine the variables of categorical or nominal scale, such as gender, marital status, and occupation.

After collecting the questionnaire data, factor analysis is used to conduct classification of the types and a total of four types emerged: recreation type, nature/ecology type, physical adventure type, historical/artistic activity type. Furthermore, in the verification of the demographic variables of each type preferences: age and nature‐eco type preferences constitute a significant positive correlation, and age has also formed a significant negative correlation with physical adventure type; gender differences result in a significant difference in recreation type preferences and a significant difference in physical adventure type preferences; marital status has a significant variation regarding physical adventure preferences.

Special interest tours are gradually on the rise and the previous literature is still lacking a systematic method for investigative analysis. Accordingly, conducting a systematic categorization of special interest tour preferences and to examining the background of the consumers of each type of special interest tour preference is essential.

The necessity for special interest tours to conform to consumer interests, and the existence of special interests, require that those in the travel industry conduct market segmentation, prior to designing travel itineraries, so as to have an understanding of the target market. Furthermore, the types of special interest tour preference this study provides can offer the basis for discussion of relevant issues for those travel business industry operators in the industry and future researchers.

The objective of this research is to assess whether two events, the 9‐21 Earthquake in 1999 and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak in 2003, had a temporary or long‐term impact on the inbound tourism demand from Japan. Furthermore, a comparative study is conducted to assess whether intervention analysis produces better forecasts compared with forecasts without intervention analysis.

The data adopted in this study consist of monthly visitor arrivals from Japan to Taiwan for the period January 1979‐September 2006. The first 321 observations ( January 1979‐September 2005) are used to develop two tentative models, with and without intervention analyses, and then compare with the known values (October 2005‐September 2006) for accuracy testing.

Experimental results show that the effect of both disasters on Japanese inbound tourism presented only temporarily, and the forecasting efficiency of ARIMA with intervention is superior to that of a model without intervention.

The study had difficulty accurately delineating the rebound in Japanese tourist based on monthly data. There are other factors that might influence a rebound, such as people' fading memories or the purpose of visitation. The geographic proximity of Taiwan to Japan could also account for perceived risk factors.

The results indicate that the Japanese inbound arrivals sharply dropped following both of the two disastrous occurrences, suggesting that the Japanese tourists are likely to be responsive to prompt marketing strategies and messages. The practical implication for tourism operators include the usefulness of reinforcing the package holiday by establishing an attractively priced travel package or offering a package with a variety of highly desirable or unique features to increase competition.

This study is a first attempt in the tourism literature to model Japanese demand for travel to Taiwan after these two traumatic crises.

This study is interested in the tourist satisfaction of Kenting Wind Chime Festival, as well as in tourist's characteristic and their revisiting commitment. The purpose is to survey customer satisfaction, which has significant implications for the economic performance of the firm, and to focus on local festival activity. Since 1994, Taiwan has continuously promoted festival activities, and the 2006 Kenting Wind Chime Festival is the first of 12 major festivals selected for promotion by Taiwan Tourism Bureau.

ANOVA analysis was applicable for the inference relationships among tourist characteristics, satisfaction, and revisiting commitment. Additionally, it was supplemented by open questions interviews. The survey period was from January 21 to February 12, 2006.

Three findings have been concluded in this survey. First, the 2006 Wind‐Chime Festival tourists are mostly coming with their families, and they are first‐time visitors, who have received information from television and network, and had plans in advance. Second, for festival activity, local show is more popular than theme part equipments. Finally, it must be emphasized that local damper (e.g. mountain tempest) is not passive bounded.

On the one hand, the 216 subjects are restricted to family, and the inference will be limited. On the other, the single item to collect data for understanding the tourists' satisfaction in Wind Chime Festival was used.

Managers should develop the completely understanding of media, because most tourists are influenced by television and networks.

The paper shows that customer‐oriented and integrative tourism programs improve tourist satisfaction.