The arrival of Chinese tourists in ever-increasing numbers has highlighted Taiwan’s lack of venues suitable for large group activities, a local travel agency executive said yesterday.
Tai Chi-heng (戴啟珩), chairman of Bobby Travel Service Co Ltd, said his company had great difficulty finding a hall in Taipei in which to stage a conference and banquet yesterday for more than 5,200 employees of Perfect (China) Co Ltd, the second-largest direct sales company in China.
CONVERSIONS
Tai said his company finally managed to rent the Nankang Exhibition Hall at the Taipei World Trade Center, which has a capacity of 6,000 people, as a venue for the party, but he had to spend NT$20 million (US$622,000) to convert the exhibition hall into a dining hall and add a temporary stage.
EXTRA STAFF
Tai said that his company, as well as three other local travel agencies that jointly ran tours for the Perfect workers, had to hire 600 workers from a local hotel to cater the lunch and dinner banquets, in addition to hundreds of extra staff to serve the Chinese tourists.
SATISFIED
Tai said his Chinese customers were satisfied with the treatment and service they received in Taiwan, with a Perfect (China) executive saying that the tour had set the benchmark for the company’s future overseas trips.
The 5,200 employees being recognized by the company arrived in Taiwan in 130 separate groups from Wednesday to Sunday, for a seven or nine-day tour covering mostly the western part of the country.
Tai estimated that they would bring NT$300 million in business, including NT$220 million in travel costs alone.
Perfect (China) president Hu Ruilian (胡瑞連) said the wonderful experience the company’s employees had in Taiwan would make many of them want to revisit as tourists in future.
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