Following the closure of three local travel agencies within the past week that affected more than 1,660 customers, the government said that it would lead an overhaul of travel industry supervision mechanisms in the hope of avoiding such incidents.
Last Friday, the Taipei-based Hsi Yang Yang Travel Service Co (喜洋洋旅行社) bounced some checks and it was discovered that the company president Chu Hsiang-ping (屈湘平) had embezzled NT$13.2 million (US$400,000), affecting 612 customers who had booked overseas tours with the company during the Lunar New Year holidays.
Then on thursday it was revealed that Taipei-based Perth Travel Service Co's (辰欣旅行社) chief executive Liu Chung-hsing (劉中興) had fled the nation on Monday after having embezzled more than NT$42 million in group tour fees. Taipei-based Eagle Tours Co (金鷹旅行社) reported the similar case yesterday.
More than 70 tour groups, 1,540 customers, discovered that their plans for Lunar New Year trips to Thailand, Subic Bay, Cebu and China were in ruins following the travel industry's largest debacle in a decade.
"Although time is limited, we'll try our best to help these customers transfer to other travel agencies," Roget Hsu (許高慶), secretary general of the Travel Agents Association of Taiwan (旅行公會全國聯合會), said at a press conference yesterday.
The association have prioritized customers whose destinations were Asian countries, such as Thailand and Indonesia, where Taiwanese travelers only require a landing visa, and South Korea, a visa-free country for Taiwanese passport holders, when providing assistance to those wishing to switch tours, providing that plane tickets and accommodation are still available.
Nearly 200 people have already accepted the association's new arrangements, he said.
As Hsi Yang Yang and Perth are both members of the Travel Quality Assurance Association (品保協會), the insurance payouts will be NT$10 million for each company.
As of yesterday, 359 Hsi Yang Yang clients had registered with the quality assurance association group to recover tour fees totaling NT$7.3 million. They would obtain full compensation from the insurers, said the association's chairman Boggy Lin (林進榮).
In Perth's case, 1,302 customers have so far filed complaints with the association for a total amount of NT$32.5 million. Among them are 1,072 people who payed a total of NT$28 million by credit card. These payments could be claimed back from the credit card companies, Lin said.
The remaining 230 victims paid a total of NT$4.4 million in cash, and they will be reimbursed through the insurance scheme.
The Tourism Bureau urged other victims to contact the quality assurance association by early next month at the latest to ensure that they receive their compensation in full.
Chang Shi-chung (張錫聰), director of the hotel, travel and training division at the Tourism Bureau, announced that the government would convene a meeting with representatives from the tourist industry and consumer advocacy groups on Feb. 26, the first working day after the Lunar New Year holiday, to examine the flawed supervision mechanism.
He urged tourists to check their booking records with airlines before their trips to ensure that they have not also been the victim of fraud.
Condemning the two cases, the Consumers' Foundation (消基會) said investigators should launch probes and freeze the assets of the agencies' bosses and shareholders for the purposes of future compensation, secretary-general Yu Kai-hsiung (游開雄) said.
RSS