Taiwanese travel companies said yesterday that fewer than 1,000 Taiwanese tourists are currently in Bangkok as tours to the city have been either suspended or pared down.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs elevated its travel alert for Bangkok on Thursday night from orange to red, which is an advisory not to enter an area, as a stand-off between Thai authorities and protesters intensified.
Hsu Kao-ching (?y), secretary general of Taiwan's Travel Agents Association, said the new alert would not significantly affect the operations of the local travel industry as the number of tourists to Thailand had decreased sharply.
Figures from Lion Travel Service, a major tour operator in Taiwan, show that since the anti-government protests began in Bangkok, the number of Taiwanese tourists has dropped from 2,000 to 200 per month.
Spokeswoman Lin Cheng-ye (林承曄) said that Lion has changed its itineraries for 34 Taiwanese tourists in order to avoid the dangerous districts.
However, South East Travel Service said it would not advise Taiwanese to visit Bangkok at this time and is therefore not offering any Bangkok tours at present. Instead, it would recommend Phuket or Chiang Mai, the travel service said.
At the Kaohsiung international travel fair earlier this week, Kaohsiung Association of Travel Agents director-general Ma Yih-long (馬一龍) said that the Tourism Authority of Thailand was not selling any travel packages to avoid disappointed tourists.
According to Ma, the 13 people on a tour organized by Life Tour travel agency in Kaohsiung have said in telephone calls to Taipei that they are not worried about their safety in Bangkok.
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