Hundreds of legal hoteliers from across the nation are scheduled to rally at Taipei Railway Station this morning to protest against short-stay apartments, which are currently illegal in Taiwan.
Hotel operators are scheduled to attend a news conference organized by the Tourism Bureau, at which they plan to endorse the government’s efforts to crack down on illegal hoteliers, before staging a protest at the railway station against illegal operators.
Members of hotel associations throughout Taiwan are expected to attend the rally, Hotel Association of ROC chairman Chang Jung-nan (張榮南) said.
The nation has welcomed more than 10 million international tourists per year since it began targeting tourists from Southeast Asian countries, according to the Tourism Bureau, Chang said.
However, the average hotel occupancy rate has been steadily declining due to many tourists now staying at short-stay apartments, Chang said, adding that the association estimates that the industry has suffered an annual financial loss of NT$30 billion (US$1 billion) because of illegal operators.
“They do not pay taxes and they work with Internet platform operators to compete with us,” he said. “Many legal hoteliers are about to go out of business.”
“We will not protest against the Tourism Bureau. Rather, we will protest against the illegal operators and ask the Tourism Bureau to step up its efforts to shut them down,” he added. “There is no way that legal and illegal operators can coexist and thrive together.”
Hotel operators would gather at the Cosmos Hotel Taipei to discuss what actions they can take against such tactics, Chang said.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) also commented on their appeal yesterday, saying that the practices of traditional industries, such as hotels, are changing, requiring cooperation among different parties.
“Currently, short-stay apartments are illegal. In the long run, we should consider the possibility of forming partnerships among different accommodation service operators,” he said.
Even though Japan is forcing Airbnb to remove all home-sharing listings that do not meet lawful criteria, Hochen said the Japanese government hopes that home-sharing operators could coexist with hotel operators.
“Technically, we do need to enforce the laws to help some of the operators run legal operations, but we also hope that existing hotel operators look at this as an opportunity for possible partnerships,” he said.
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
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
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