Consumers spending again ...

"I believe as long as SARS is contained, people will come back to enjoy the night life," said Junior Lin (林志弘), a shareholder in the club.

One weekend warrior was ready to return to the party.

"Now I feel more comfortable hanging out with my friends in nightclubs like we used to," said Ann Lin (林譽安), an employee at I-View Process Post Production Corp (意象影像處理).

Cinema-goers too appeared to heading back to the big screen over the past weekend as SARS fears took a back seat to entertainment.

"Viewer traffic in our Taipei theater over the past weekend rose by around 14 percent from 12,000 to 14,000," said a Warner Village cinema official who asked not to be named.

That number is still down from, on average, 20,000 customers that usually pack the halls of Warner Village on the weekend, the official said.

The theater has held off on new releases until movie-goer traffic is stable, Warner Village cinema operation manager Jessie Chou (周美惠) said yesterday.

Reviving travel plans

Meanwhile, travel bookings to SARS-free destinations have swelled over the past few days as the public choose to jumpstart vacation plans delayed because of the infectious disease.

"Bookings for flights to Bali are about 90 percent full in June," said Frank Chen (陳豐續), president of the Lion Travel Ltd (雄獅旅行社), which offers full-package group tours to Indonesia's resort island in partnership with EVA Airways Corp (長榮).

"Most people have gradually accepted that travel by air does not increase the risk of contracting SARS," Chen said.

Bookings to Thailand's Phuket island also saw substantial growth over the past week, said Lee Lo-sheng (李羅生), a sales manager at Longwaytour Travel Service Ltd (明泰旅行社).

"Phuket became very popular these days, and there is growing interest in holiday destinations that are viewed as safe to visit such as Australia and New Zealand," Lee said.

Longwaytour Travel is offering budget travel packages to Phuket with China Airlines Co (華航), Taiwan's largest carrier.

"Bookings are about 80-90 percent full on flights to Phuket this month," Lee said.

According to government statistics, the number of passengers passing through Chiang Kai-shek International Airport totalled 8,362 on Sunday, compared with around 6,500 a week ago.

Officials have said the nation is appealing to the World Health Organization to lift its travel warning against the country by June 20.

"The outbreak seems to be nearly over but it would be premature to say we're free of SARS just because the daily number of new cases was in single digits over the past few days," said Ingrid Chen (陳姿瑛), corporate communication manager of the ING Antai Life Insurance Co (安泰人壽).

Despite the apparent containment of the infectious virus, consumers are expected to remain cautious on spending, an Academia Sinica economist said yesterday.

"The worst may be over [regarding the spread of SARS], but deep in their hearts people know that the virus is still around and therefore may not be able to totally relax," said Wu Chung-shu (吳中書), a research fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of Economics.

"Learning from the experience of Toronto and Singapore, Taiwanese know that the epidemic may come back to haunt them," Wu said.