Yoho Bike Hotel: a hotel for the two-tired
| Hengchun, Taiwan
• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.
Giant, the world’s biggest bike manufacturer, has built a one-of-a-kind beach resort for cyclists.
Taiwan-based Giant operates the 68-room Yoho Bike Hotel, which opened in February 2009, to promote leisure cycling. For at least $166 a night, Yoho guests can pedal through the corridors and ride their wheels into extra-wide elevators and guest rooms with elevated storage racks. Hotel staff members do repairs and cleanups. Travel industry authorities say they know of no other hotel in the world with such extensive services just for bike-riding guests.
Taiwan’s bike industry grew 20 percent last year to $1.5 billion. Cycling increased in Taiwan on pace with the 2008 global oil price surge.
Giant hopes the resort will help keep its sales at current levels of about 5.5 million units a year.
“This is mainly to promote bike riding in Taiwan,” says Chen Jung-chiang, a division chief in the firm’s head sales office.
Guests without bikes can rent them starting at $6 per hour. Two-lane back roads outside the resort lure cyclists.
“There are quite a few roads, and they’re challenging because of the strong winds,” recalls Huang Wei-lun, a Taipei insurance worker who spent three nights at Yoho last year for a bike race. “If you need any service, the [hotel] will help you fix the bike or wash it up.”
