Nearly 20,000 people converged on the plaza in front of Taipei City Hall yesterday to get their hands on cheap air fares as part of the "Fly Taiwan Fly" effort to stimulate the SARS-battered tourism industry.
"We are glad to see many people are still interested in traveling and have come to the fair to support us," Sun Huang-hsiang (孫洪祥), president of TransAsia Airways (復興航空) and organizer of the travel fair said yesterday.
PHOTO: LO PEI-TEH, TAIPEI TIMES
A total of 50 travel agencies, hotels and airline representatives yesterday set up some 80 booths at the plaza to promote their latest discounts packages to a variety of international destinations.
Many of the bargain prices continue even though the fair is over.
A five-day trip to Indonesia's Bali, for instance, is going for NT$15,900 per person for departures by the end of July.
Northwest Airlines is offering a round trip ticket to San Francisco via Tokyo for NT$14,000 from July 11 to August 31.
British Asia Airways tempted customers yesterday with a round-trip ticket from Taipei to Europe via Hong Kong this summer for NT$26,500, down NT$5,000 from the same period last year.
The nation's tourism authorities and businesses kicked of a serial of promotions last week after the World Health Organization (WHO) lifted its warning against non-essential travel to Taiwan on June 17.
Industry professionals said the promotions are working.
"Our current flight occupancy rate has rebounded to 80 percent and the booking rate for next month is nearly 70 percent," Nieh Kuo-wei (
Last month, when the number of SARS infections was on the rise, the company's average occupancy rate plummeted to about 30 percent.
China Airlines Co (
"However, passenger load rates on flights to Japan and Hong Kong are still below 50 percent," said Andy Sun (
He added that by year-end even though China Airlines' occupancy rate is expected to rebound to 80 percent, the company's revenue will be undermined by the big discounts.
"Bargains help us to lure passengers back, while the help to the bottomline was limited," Sun said.
China Airlines had offered discounts of up to 82 percent off regular fares to passengers who flew before June 20.
A joint force of airlines also auctioned 200 international tickets at yesterday's event.
The auction generated nearly NT$2 million yesterday that will be donated to non-profit organization the United Way Taiwan.
Bid winners were glad to get bargains on airline tickets.
"Compared to regular prices, I saved nearly NT$10,000," said Huang Shou-yuan (
Other fair attendants also expressed an interest in cheap fares.
"After staying at home for nearly three months to avoid SARS, we are most interested in having a family trip in summer," said Lisa Lin (林立驊), a 35-year-old mother of two.
She added that her family originally planned to take a domestic trip, but "since prices for outbound groups are so cheap now, we are considering going to Japan instead."
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured