Print

Mail

wiki links

Tourism services must improve: Liu

The nation should not only improve its airports but also upgrade the quality of its tourism services to cater to an anticipated influx of Chinese tourists ahead of the opening of weekend nonstop cross-Taiwan Strait charter flights, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said yesterday.

Liu made the remarks after visiting Taipei’s Songshan Airport, one of the eight airports that will handle the direct charter flights and tourists from China.

The launch of weekend charter flights on July 4 and the arrivial of greater numbers of Chinese tourists on July 18 were made possible by agreements signed by Taiwan’s quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), in Beijing on June 13.

The services will initally cover five Chinese cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xiamen and Nanjing — and eight Taiwan airports in Taipei, Taoyuan, Kaohsiung, Taichung, Penghu, Hualien, Kinmen and Taitung.

Noting that renovation work undertaken at Songshan Airport was proceeding satisfactorily, Liu said he hoped that Taiwan would also pay attention to both the services the country can offer and the training of those involved in the travel industry.

“We need to improve our services, not only for mainland tourists but also for the future development of Taiwan’s tourism,” Liu said, urging government agencies and tourism operators to work together to make visitors to Taiwan “feel different.”

Liu urged the Council of Agriculture and the Department of Health to implement a complete quarantine mechanism at local airports that would serve Chinese tourists to ensure the health of travelers and local residents.

Expressing his appreciation to the people and organizations involved in the preparations for the influx of Chinese tourists, Liu said: “I am sure that everyone has done their utmost on this matter and I hope our efforts will satisfy the people of our country.”

In response to criticism from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Central Standing Committee member Sean Lien (連勝文), who said that the facilities at Taipei’s Songshan Airport were even worse than those at North Korea’s Pyongyang Airport, Civil Aeronautics Administration Director-General Billy Chang (張國政) said that with everyone’s efforts, “Songshan Airport will become the best airport.”

Efforts to renovate Songshan Airport became necessary after the SEF and ARATS agreed to open cross-strait flights from Fridays to Mondays.

The airport served as Taiwan’s main international gateway through the 1970s until Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport opened in 1979.

Since then, it has exclusively served domestic flights, but has fallen into disrepair with a decline in domestic air traffic prompted by the opening of high-speed rail service and a general falloff in demand.

At a separate setting yesterday, Lien remained critical of the infrastructure at Songshan Airport, blaming the poor condition of many local airports on the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government.

Lien said the DPP government failed to improve the state of the country’s airports during the past eight years and rather focused its efforts on ideological issues such as changing the title of “Taoyuan CKS International Airport” to “Taoyuan International Airport.”

“The DPP government changed the name of the airports, but not their poor condition,” he said yesterday after attending a graduation ceremony at Taipei College of Maritime Technology.

He also dismissed Chang’s disagreement with his comments and the argument that many airports were completed when Lien’s father, former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰), served as a top government official.

“It is true that airports in South Korea, Hong Kong and even Beijing are better than those in Taiwan. Public issues like this are debatable,” he said.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MO YAN-CHIH
This story has been viewed 1617 times.