People planning trips to Australia or New Zealand between next month and December could find tours that are NT$5,000 to NT$15,000 cheaper compared with those offered in same quarter last year, the Travel Quality Assurance Association (TQAA) said in a report issued yesterday.
The reduction in prices is due to exchange rates for the Australian and New Zealand dollars being at their lowest points in 10 years, the association said.
Compared with the same quarter last year, the price of the Australian tours could drop by between NT$5,000 and NT$10,000, while those for tours to New Zealand could be NT$6,000 to NT$16,000 cheaper, it said.
Those looking for less expensive vacations overseas might also want to consider trips to Europe and North America.
The devaluation of the euro has seen charges for European tours drop by between NT$2,000 and NT$5,000 compared with the same period last year, when tours were being priced at a New Taiwan dollar to euro exchange rate of 43 to 1 euro.
Travel agencies are now calculating tour costs based on an exchange rate NT$38 to 1 euro.
A tour to the US cost about the same as last year because of cheaper flights, tour bus fares and accommodation costs, despite the appreciation of the US dollar.
Trips to Canada have gone down by NT$1,000 to NT$2,000 for the same reason, the association said.
Despite the devaluation of the yen, tour costs for Japan are forecast to rise by between NT$2,000 and NT$5,000 for trips next month and in November compared with the same period last year, the association said.
However, except for tours to the Hokkaido region, trips to Japan in December should cost about the same as last year, it said.
Lin Yi-chun (林怡君), a manager of Gloria Tour and the association’s expert on the Northeast Asia tourism market, said Japan’s tourism market is booming because of an increase in domestic travelers and tourists from China and Southeast Asia to the point where supply cannot meet the demand, making accommodation costs in that country more expensive.
The costs of hiring tour buses, dining and other services in Japan have also risen by 30 percent, she said.
These factors explain why the cost of tours to Japan did not fall after the devaluation of the yen, she said.
In other news, the association said that the spread of dengue fever in Tainan has not impacted Taiwan’s inbound tourism market.
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