Tens of thousands of people braved the rain to visit the Taipei International Travel Fair yesterday, spurring optimism in the tourism sector ahead of the winter travel season.
While the official entry time for general visitors was noon, some started lining up at the Taipei World Trade Center early yesterday morning for fear that they might be too late for some of the most attractive deals being offered by travel agencies, hotels and restaurants.
Tourism representatives from 61 countries participated in this year’s fair.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
According to the organizing committee, the fair has 1,500 booths this year, 25 percent more than at last year’s fair.
Aside from tourism officials, representatives from travel agencies, hotels, airlines and restaurants are also attending the fair to showcase various special deals.
A woman surnamed Lin (林) and her friend took a day off work to visit the fair. She said they were planning a four-day trip to Hong Kong during the Christmas period and were trying to find package deals that cost less than NT$16,000.
“We have done some research online and have targeted several travel agencies,” Lin said.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said in a speech at the opening ceremony that statistics from the Tourism Bureau showed that domestic tourism hit 120 million visits to attractions last year. Meanwhile, the outbound and inbound tourists also topped 9.4 million and 5.56 million trips respectively. All these figures were records, he said.
Noting the number of inbound tourists between January and October this year has already reached 4.82 million visits and that visits to tourist attractions also grew by an average of 12 percent, Wu said he was confident that the nation would set new records this year, despite the debt crisis in Europe.
“In the past, it took about 10 years for the nation to see a 1 million increase in international tourists,” Wu said. “The interval has shortened to just a year.”
Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said the number of cross-strait flights would increase from 370 to 558 per week in the winter. Taiwan could potentially overtake Hong Kong and become the main gateway to China, he said.
Mao said the open-skies agreement signed by Taiwan and Japan on Thursday would also help raise the number of weekly flights between Taiwan and Japan from 210 to 300, or even higher.
The Dominican Republic and Brazil are two countries appearing at the travel fair for the first time.
Meanwhile, the Consumers’ Foundation urged people to avoid making any rash decisions while shopping at the fair.
The watchdog said it had received about 50 complaints after last year’s fair.
There were mainly two types of complaint — companies unilaterally changing the contents of their products and consumers being unable to make reservations with their hotel coupons.
The foundation said consumers are entitled to full refund should either situation occur. They should keep all documentation, including flyers distributed by the service operators.
The travel fair runs through Monday.
Additional reporting by CNA
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