Formosa International Hotels Corp (晶華酒店) said yesterday it hopes to hire an additional 100 people in the second half of the year to meet an anticipated increase in demand created by rising numbers of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan.
Rebecca Lee (李靖文), Formosa International’s human resources executive director, said the company expects the number of Chinese tourists will rise once the government allows Chinese nationals to visit Taiwan individually, rather than as part of tour groups.
The company is scheduled to hold a job fair on Aug. 20 to recruit new employees, she said.
At present, Chinese nationals must join a tour group to vacation in Taiwan, but the government is studying the feasibility of adjusting the policy.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said earlier this month that he hoped Taiwan would allow the entry of individual Chinese visitors on an “experimental” basis early next year.
The hotel group’s announcement comes as a survey released by manpower agency 104 Corp (104人力銀行) yesterday found that 83.6 percent of respondents who had dealt with Chinese visitors said it was not easy to make money from them.
According to the survey, 46 percent of respondents said the biggest challenge posed by Chinese visitors is that they are very demanding and “hard to deal with.”
Additionally, 38.3 percent said Chinese visitors were good at bargaining, and 33.4 percent claimed there was fierce competition among local companies to secure business from Chinese tour groups.
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