The Tourism Bureau yesterday confirmed that 152 Vietnamese tourists had been reported missing after entering the nation through Kaohsiung on a special tourism visa last week.
The tourists had joined tours arranged by the ETHoliday travel agency, with one group arriving on Friday and three on Sunday, the bureau said.
The tours had 153 Vietnamese, 152 of which left the groups after their arrival in Taiwan, the bureau said, adding that ETHoliday quickly reported the incident.
Given the severity of the situation, the bureau said it has instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to stop granting visas to Vietnamese travelers in ETHoliday tour groups.
The tourists were able to travel to Taiwan through the ministry’s “Kuan Hung Pilot Project,” an electronic visa program designed to increase the number of quality tour groups visiting from India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, the bureau said, adding that these countries are part of the government’s New Southbound Policy.
The project, which was launched in 2015, allows travelers from the six countries on package tours of at least five people to apply for tourism visas without having to present financial statements, the bureau said.
Over the past three years, about 150 tourists arriving through the project have been reported missing, bureau statistics showed.
This was the largest group of runaway tourists since 2015, it said.
Only one Vietnamese tourist on an ETHoliday tour in the past three years has left the group and been unaccounted for, bureau statistics showed.
The travel agency in Vietnam that assists ETHoliday in forming the tour groups has lost tourists 10 times, but only one or two people each time.
The bureau said that tourists found later by immigration officials would be deported at ETHoliday’s expense.
In other developments, the number of tourists traveling between Kinmen and China’s Fujian Province via the “small three links” is expected to reach 1.85 million this year, up from 1.78 million, the Maritime Port Bureau said yesterday, adding that this would be a record high since the links opened in 2001.
The port authority said it has had 12 cases of tourists traveling via the links who carried in pork products from China without reporting them to customs, adding that they were fined because of an African swine fever outbreak, but before the government raised the fine to a minimum of NT$200,000.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai