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For most visitors to a strange city, their first impressions of
the place usually involve a rather special stranger who picks them
up at the airport, railway station, or bus terminal, and drives
them to their hotel - the taxi driver.
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Therefore, in its eager bidding for the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing
yesterday asked its thousands of taxi drivers to put more stress
on hospitality.
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It is time for all the taxi companies and drivers in the city to
pledge high quality service to help visitors feel at home in the
ancient city, said Zhang Yansheng, director of the Beijing Transportation
Bureau yesterday.
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Some of the specific measures include tutoring local taxi drivers
in spoken English, setting higher service standards and improving
monitoring processes and equipping each taxi with introductory tapes
describing the city and at least one kind of newspaper.
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The goal, Zhang summarized, is to make Beijing taxis safe, comfortable
and dependable.
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In addition, Zhang promised to speed up the city's construction
of an efficient taxi dispatching and positioning system and help
taxis change to cleaner burning liquid natural gas in place of conventional
petrol.
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This is an effort to go along with the theme Beijing suggested for
the 2008 Olympic Games: emphasizing the advancement of science,
the use of new technologies, and environmental protection.
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The executive officials of the International Olympic Committee will
come to investigate Beijing in three months.
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(Beijing-2008 11/27/2000)
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