After a dysentery outbreak among Taiwanese tourists returning from Bali, several travel groups cancelled trips to the Indonesian resort island yesterday.
News of the outbreak may hurt travel agencies offering trips to Bali during the Lunar New Year high season, travel industry officials said.
"About 100 tourists have informed us that they want to cancel their trips to Bali or have their itinerary changed," Paul Fang (房德揚), general manager of Island World Travel Service (世宇), told the Taipei Times yesterday.
Vincent Lin (林承曄), director of Lion Travel Service Co (雄獅), said his company has also received about 10 calls to change their destination to Phuket. "Nevertheless, we cannot estimate, for the time being, whether the number of cancellations will rise," Lin said.
The Center for Disease Control -- citing figures from Island World and Lion Travel, along with Comfort Travel Service Co (
Travel agencies said they have taken measures to prevent travelers from contracting the disease, including providing bottled water and asking restaurants to show their health certificates as proof of good hygiene.
"We have also excluded the suspected restaurants from our program and changed to other restaurants to reassure our customers. Our agency will bear the costs generated due to the changes," Fang said.
Bali is the most popular destination in Southeast Asia for Taiwanese holidaymakers, attracting up to 250,000 people per year.
The outbreak of SARS earlier this year inflicted heavy damage on the travel industry, with the number of Taiwan's outbound travelers dropping 80 percent.
The industry fears the dysentery incident may bring about another wave of losses on the recovering business.
"If the dysentery situation does not improve, we are worried that the industry may see a decrease of 20 percent to 30 percent in the number of people traveling to Bali during the Chinese New Year," Fang said.
Roget Hsu (
"In terms of consumer protection, the association will ask travel agencies to bear the medical expenses for customers who get infected because of group activities," Hsu added.
Tourists in Bali have to watch out since the source of infection has not been confirmed, said Chen I-chuan (陳怡全), secretary-general of Travel Quality Assurance Association (旅遊品保協會).
"We can only remind travelers to avoid rare food, to wash their hands more often and to drink bottled water," Chen said. "Since the government has not issued travel advice on Bali, consumers who want to cancel their trips will need to bear the losses themselves."
The Eurovision Song Contest has seen a surge in punter interest at the bookmakers, becoming a major betting event, experts said ahead of last night’s giant glamfest in Basel. “Eurovision has quietly become one of the biggest betting events of the year,” said Tomi Huttunen, senior manager of the Online Computer Finland (OCS) betting and casino platform. Betting sites have long been used to gauge which way voters might be leaning ahead of the world’s biggest televised live music event. However, bookmakers highlight a huge increase in engagement in recent years — and this year in particular. “We’ve already passed 2023’s total activity and
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
Intel Corp yesterday reinforced its determination to strengthen its partnerships with Taiwan’s ecosystem partners including original-electronic-manufacturing (OEM) companies such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電). “Tonight marks a new beginning. We renew our new partnership with Taiwan ecosystem,” Intel new chief executive officer Tan Lip-bu (陳立武) said at a dinner with representatives from the company’s local partners, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the US chip giant’s presence in Taiwan. Tan took the reins at Intel six weeks ago aiming to reform the chipmaker and revive its past glory. This is the first time Tan
RSS