Travel agents pin hopes on upcoming holidays

Travel agencies are placing their hopes in bumper Lantern Festival and Valentine's Day holidays after disappointing sales during the Lunar New Year holiday.

"The early arrival of the Lunar New Year holiday this meant people got their year-end bonuses quite late, and therefore they didn't have enough time to work out any travel plans before the holiday," said Victor Lin (林育德), a marketing manager of Eztravel.com (易遊網), the nation's largest online travel agency.

"Compared to previous years ... we estimate that sales of domestic tours slid by up to 20 percent this year," Lin said.

The company failed to offload some hotel rooms and packages to eastern Taiwan or Kenting, the most popular spots for domestic holidaymakers, the day before New Year's Eve, which used to be sold out by then in previous years.

People preferred one-day trips, such as to the Taiwan Flower Expo in Changhua, which says it has had more than 500,000 visitors, he said.

Eztravel expects to sell holidays worth more than NT$300 million this month, one-third on domestic holidays.

"Though we have outperformed our competitors, the sales created still did not meet our goal of NT$400 million as we originally expected," Lin said.

"We are therefore pinning our hopes on promotions for the upcoming Lantern Festival and then the next big holiday, Valentine's Day, to make up for what we lost during the New Year period," he said.

Star Travel Corp (燦星旅遊網), the nation's third largest online travel agency, established last February by the Tsann Kuen Group (燦坤), said it had done well during the New Year holidays.

"We expect sales of more than NT$100 million in the New Year month [January], an increase of more than 10 percent compared to previous months," said Zoe Chen (陳昭安), Star Travel's marketing supervisor.

"Our exclusive online dealership of tickets to the Taiwan Flower Expo in Changhua County from Jan. 17 to March 14 also helped boost our business for one-day and two-day travel packages to neighborhoods near the venue," she said.

Eastern Taiwan and Kenting have become less popular this year, Chen said. But tourism in central Taiwan -- with its abundant resources such as historical sites in Changhua, hot springs in Nantou and spectacular scenery alongside the central cross-island highway -- has revived after the 921 earthquake in 1999.

The company is upbeat about sales of Valentine's Day promotions for people seeking a romantic night with their partner.

"And we have seen almost full bookings for rooms in hot spring resorts in Taipei's Peitou and Wulai," she said.