The tourism industry -- clobbered by last year's SARS epidemic -- may not have a great peak season this summer, even though the economy has bounced back from rock bottom, travel agents said yesterday.
"Overall, our business for June and July surged by 10 percent from the same period last year, but is still lower than previous summers," Stone Yang (楊豐慶), a manager at the Lion Travel Service Co (雄獅旅行社), said yesterday.
Taiwanese holidaymakers traditionally head for Europe and the US over the summer. But due to price hikes, most people appear to be choosing Japan and Southeast Asian destinations this year, he said.
He attributed the price hikes for European tours to the appreciation of the euro and a fuel surcharge of US$13 per flight that will be levied starting July 1. Stricter US visa regulations is also hurting bookings for US tours, he said.
While the fuel surcharge encouraged customers to pay for their trips this month, online agency Star Travel Corp (燦星旅遊網) said it is expecting lower-than-forecast profits, according to marketing planning supervisor Zoe Chen (陳昭安).
Regardless whether the offerings were full-tour service or air tickets and hotels packages, prices remained exceptionally low in the post-SARS period, making consumers less willing to pay higher rates now, Chen said.
"We even need to use `buy one, get one free' tactics to lure customers," Chen said.
Companies who expected to rake in the bucks from overseas visitors during the Tourism Bureau's "Visit Taiwan Year" are also feeling disappointed.
The bureau budgeted NT$1 billion for the project in hopes of attracting 3.2 million foreign visitors -- which would have been an increase of 2.2 million people over last year's arrivals and 2.9 million more than in 2002.
However, the bureau's statistics showed that for the first five months of the year there were just 1.13 million visitors.
Huang Ching-hui (
Huang said the bureau has worked with various travel groupss and government agencies to host promotional events -- including a recent Taiwanese food exhibition in Hong Kong, an ecology trip to Matsu to view terns which departs on Saturday and next month's International Children's Folklore and Folkgame Festival in Ilan.
But Sean Chuang (莊秀石), chairman of the International Tourist Hotels Association of Taipei (臺北市觀光旅館公會), said the year-end legislative elections will create tensions which will continue to scare visitors away.
"It is sad that political factors are dragging the industry down," Chuang said.
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