Following protests from travel agencies and tour bus operators, the Tourism Bureau has slightly eased its standards for tour operators when determining a bus driver’s maximum daily driving distance during domestic tours.
The bureau on Wednesday night disclosed its official guidelines for tour operators when designing one-day trips.
On Tuesday morning, the bureau had ordered operators to stop offering one-day tours from Kaohsiung or Taipei to Taichung’s Wuling Farm (武陵農場), Nantou County’s Cingjing Farm (清境農場), Pingtung County’s Kenting (墾丁) and other destinations in remote areas, as the bus drivers would spend long hours on the road and face uncertain road conditions.
It also said that drivers must not exceed 300km per day if driving mainly on non-mountain roads. On mountain roads, the driving distance should remain within 200km.
The regulations, which were designed to prevent drivers from being overworked, drew criticism from travel agents and tour bus operators, who said that using the number of kilometers driven per day is an impractical method of measuring when a driver might become overworked.
Drivers may not necessarily exceed their daily working hours even if they drive more than 300km per day, they said.
Following the protest, drivers were permitted an additional 100km of driving distance, meaning that drivers are limited to 400km on normal roads per day and 300km if the trip involves travel on mountain roads, the bureau said.
According to the bureau, many tour operators had rescinded offers for some one-day tours before and after the announcement on Tuesday.
Lillian Wu (吳碧蓮), a member of the travel safety committee at the Travel Quality Assurance Association, said that the new policy was rushed and has disrupted the market.
While tour operators would now alternate between using railways and buses for two or three-day trips, she said whether consumers can accept this kind of arrangement remains to be seen.
As some operators fear that the new policy would further shrink demand for one-day tours — which are not as profitable as two or three-day trips — the bureau said that the purpose of the policy is not to cause one-day tours to disappear from the market, but to enable operators to enhance travel quality by reflecting actual operating costs in the prices they set.
“We are not using a driver’s daily driving distance as a standard to crack down on tour bus drivers whose working hours might exceed statutory limits. They are standards used by tour operators to evaluate their own tours. We are constantly reminding operators that they should not simply cater to the demands of travelers and disregard drivers’ need to rest,” bureau specialist Chin Yu-chen (金玉珍) said.
Consumers must understand that prices would increase if a tour has two drivers, she said, adding that it might take some time to comply with the new policy.
The last thing the bureau wants is for tour operators to compete over a thin profit margin, she said.
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