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.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai