Inquiries about flights and accommodations in Tokyo have jumped following Taiwan’s entry into the second round of the 2013 World Baseball Classic, travel agents said yesterday.
Despite their 2-3 loss to South Korea on Tuesday night, Taiwan qualified for the second round of competition because they lost by fewer points overall than South Korea in the Pool B games. Both countries won two games and lost one.
Best Way Travel manager Chen Tzu-chia (陳子嘉) said people inquiring about travel deals combining flight tickets and accommodation are likely to be free independent travelers (FIT) who want to cheer the Taiwanese team when they compete in Japan.
Photo: CNA
“The difficulty in arranging this kind of travel is travel agencies have to look for hotels that are near the game venue and get flight tickets for all group members,” Chen said.
Aside from problems with accommodation, Chen said those heading to Tokyo may have difficulty buying game tickets as baseball fans from around the world are also going to watch the games.
However, some of the travel agencies had bet that Taiwan would enter the second round and started making travel arrangements for hard-core fans before the Lunar New Year holiday.
In other news, the Travel Quality Assurance Association has released forecast tour group prices for different continents from next month to June. Tour groups to Europe may see prices rise by NT$3,000 to NT$5,000 per person compared with the same time last year because of an increase in airplane ticket prices and a slight appreciation of the euro.
However, prices for tour groups to Japan’s Kansai area could drop by NT$1,000 to NT$3,000 per person due to a weak yen, while those to traveling to the Hokkaido region may see prices drop by about NT$3,000.
People planning to visit the Tateyama Kutobe Alpine Route could see tour prices rise by NT$2,000 due to higher ticket prices.
Tours to Southeast Asia, South Korea, China, North America, the Middle East, South Africa, South Asia, Australia and New Zealand may either be flat or see a slight increase because of higher oil prices, tour bus fares and seasonal factors.
While there will be cross-strait direct flights to nine cities in western China, such as Hohhot, Urumqui and Hailar, travel agents warned that tour prices to these regions are not necessarily cheaper.
“The direct flight services to these airports actually cost more than the transfer flights,” South East Travel Services manager Chen Chih-hung (陳志鴻) said. “These airports are close to some of new and increasingly popular tourist destinations in China, such as the Silk Road and the Hulunbeir Grassland. They attract a large number of Chinese tourists as well.”
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater