Beyond food and shopping: Taipei gives Malaysian families another reason to make health part of the holiday

For Malaysian families, Taipei is already a familiar holiday destination, known for its food, shopping, cultural attractions and easy access to nature. In 2025 alone, 385,787 Malaysian residents visited Taiwan, with more than 264,000 travelling primarily for leisure, according to Taiwan Tourism Administration statistics.

But a Taiwan holiday can increasingly make room for something families may find harder to prioritise in everyday life: taking stock of their health. Rather than waiting for a health concern to disrupt daily life, some travellers are using time away from work and routine as an opportunity to better understand their health, combining a preventive health assessment with the rest and family time they had already planned.

The National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2023 found that 29.2 per cent of Malaysian adults had hypertension, 33.3% had hypercholesterolaemia and 15.6 per cent had diabetes. Importantly, the survey also identified adults with raised blood pressure, blood cholesterol or glucose who had not previously known they had these conditions.

The figures reinforce the value of appropriate preventive health assessment and regular follow-up. However, preventive screening is not simply about undergoing as many tests as possible. Age, family history, individual risk factors and medical advice remain important in determining which assessments are appropriate. It is within this intersection of health, family and travel that Taipei’s Beitou district offers a different proposition.

Through a medical-tourism initiative developed under a public-private model promoted by the Taipei City Government, Taipei Beitou Health Management Hospital and Hotel Royal Beitou have been brought together under the Taipei Wellness Clinic and Resort concept, integrating health management with accommodation, healthy dining, hot springs and the surrounding Beitou experience.

Located within the same development, the arrangement allows travellers to move between their health assessment and hotel stay without having to turn the trip into a conventional hospital journey.

Depending on the individual’s selected programme and medical suitability, the hospital offers health assessments incorporating technologies such as MRI and CT imaging, ultrasound, endoscopy and AI-assisted medical imaging applications, supported by physicians, nurses, radiologists, dietitians and dedicated health-management personnel.

Rather than simply handing patients a set of numbers at the end of the process, examination findings are reviewed by the medical team before a physician provides a one-on-one explanation of available results and discusses subsequent health-management considerations. The hospital’s health-management team also provides follow-up consultation and guidance.

“Families put a great deal of thought into planning a holiday, planning where to stay, what to eat and how to make meaningful use of their time together. We believe caring for health can be approached with the same intention. The aim is not for everyone to undergo every available test. Health assessment should be appropriate to the individual. What is important is giving people the opportunity to better understand their current health, speak to a medical professional about the findings and know what they may need to follow up on afterwards,” said Dr. Kon-Ping Lin, Chief Superintendent at Taipei Beitou Health Management Hospital.

From Health Screening to More Personalised Health Information

The hospital has also expanded its preventive-health services to include Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS), which examines genetic information that may provide additional insights relevant to longer-term health management. Genetic information is, however, one part of the overall health picture rather than a prediction of a person’s medical future. Results should therefore be interpreted alongside factors such as medical and family history, lifestyle and other individual health considerations.

Health Does Not Have to Take Over the Holiday

The central idea behind Beitou’s model is that healthcare does not need to dominate the itinerary. Once the health-management portion is completed, families can return to being travellers.

Beitou itself is one of Taipei’s best-known hot-spring districts. Visitors can walk through Beitou Park, explore the Beitou Hot Spring Museum and Thermal Valley, or travel onwards to Yangmingshan National Park for its volcanic landscapes, walking trails and seasonal scenery.

Food remains part of the experience too. Beyond the health-focused meals developed by Hotel Royal Beitou’s chefs together with dietitians, visitors can explore the area’s wider culinary culture, including traditional Taiwanese dishes and the distinctive jiu-jia-cai banquet tradition.

For Muslim Malaysian travellers, Hotel Royal Beitou is also listed by the Taiwan Tourism Administration as offering Muslim-friendly accommodation and dining, adding another practical consideration for families planning their stay.

For families staying at Hotel Royal Beitou, the health and leisure portions of the trip are designed to sit alongside one another: complete the appropriate health assessment and physician consultation, return to the hotel, spend time together, enjoy the hot springs and continue exploring Taipei.

A health-focused trip does not have to mean travelling because someone is already unwell. Nor should an overseas screening replace the ongoing relationship a person has with their doctor at home. Instead, it can provide another opportunity to understand personal health, with travellers encouraged to retain their medical reports and follow up with their regular healthcare provider where necessary.

For Malaysians considering any overseas health assessment, understanding what tests are being recommended and why, who will interpret the findings, when results will be available, what happens if an abnormality is identified and how those results can be shared with doctors back home is as important as choosing the destination itself.

An Easy Addition to a Familiar Taiwan Journey

Travel accessibility also makes the concept practical for Malaysians. Malaysian passport holders are currently eligible for visa-free entry to Taiwan for stays of up to 30 days, allowing a health-focused stay in Beitou to be incorporated into a wider Taipei or Taiwan itinerary.

Ultimately, the proposition is not to replace the reasons Malaysians already travel to Taiwan. It is to add another valuable one.

A family holiday can still mean eating together, discovering Taipei, soaking in a Beitou hot spring and spending time away from everyday routines. But it can also create a moment to pay attention to something that is easily postponed at home: understanding and caring for one’s health, and encouraging the people closest to us to do the same.

Source: Taipei Beitou Health Management Hospital (Press Release)