For the Chinese tourists who survived the bus crash that occurred in Nantou County last week, this year's Mid-Autumn Festival was clouded with misery.
Some lost their loved ones in the accident while others have still not recovered from their tragic experience.
Soon after the accident, the Tourism Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) issued a statement that presented solutions designed to ensure greater travel service quality.
One solution stipulated that the daily amount each customer could be charged could not be set at below US$80.
sharp relief
The accident, however, brought the problems facing Taiwan's tourism industry into sharp relief as the nation prepares to increase access for Chinese tourists, private travel associations said.
Tseng Sheng-hai (
Tseng also said that the government has already amended regulations that allow Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan without being required to transit through the third country.
The amendment has authorized the travel agent's association to draft disciplinary rules for all travel service providers to follow.
The association is charged with the responsibility of monitoring travel service quality, setting reasonable rates for package tours, settling travel-related disputes and ensuring that tourists do not pass through Taiwan under fake identities.
Travel agencies that fail to agree to the association's disciplinary rules will not be allowed to offer services to tourists.
Moreover, any infraction of the rules by an agency could result in the imposition of a suspension of their services for one to six months.
no enforcement
However, since Taiwan and China have yet to agree on the specific terms of the amendment, the government here cannot currently enforce its regulations, Tseng said.
Tseng said that the association has no legal authority to penalize disobedient travel agencies now and could only give them verbal warnings.
Chang Cheng-mei (
He added that the intense competition among the operators in the industry has forced many travel agencies to lower their prices and look for additional revenues from other sources such as kickbacks from shop or restaurant owners.
Chang said that the nation has not established an effective certification system to provide travel service quality information about operators to tourists.
Some Chinese tourists have complained to the association that the food they ate in restaurants in Taiwan was awful and that they were often fooled into buying fake jewelry and second-rate tea, he said.
Taiwan's tourism bureau is also being panned for its ability to settle travel-related disputes and to rapidly respond to emergency travel situations.
criticized
Four months ago, the bureau was criticized for doing almost nothing when the Miramar Garden Taipei did not strictly observe the requirements stipulated in its build-operate-transfer contract when it established room prices.
Last month, when two Taiwanese tourists died at 10am in a traffic accident on the their way to Changbaishan (
The Straits Exchange Foundation, on the other hand, issued an official statement early in the afternoon of the same day.
According to the tourism bureau, a total of 54,000 Chinese tourists visited Taiwan last year.
From January to August this year, however, the number of Chinese tourists reached 72,000.
Currently, the government only allows two types of Chinese tourists to visit: those who are in Taiwan on business or other professional purposes, or those who travel to Taiwan via a third country.
The Mainland Affairs Council is negotiating with the Chinese government about the possibility of allowing Chinese tourists to enter Taiwan directly.
Minister Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said earlier that the negotiations should be concluded by the end of the year.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods