The 2009 Taipei Tourism Exposition (TTE) will serve as a platform for Taiwanese and Chinese travel agencies to expand business by collaborating with each other to offer consumers better tour products, the organizers said yesterday.
“With the government relaxing its cross-srait policy and exchanges between both sides of the strait becoming more and more frequent, we are obliged to offer a business platform for members of the industry and a chance for consumers to get good bargains,” said Peter Ting (丁萊), assistant chairman of the Taipei Association of Travel Agents (TATA, 台北旅行公會), at a pre-launch press conference.
The exposition will serve as a platform for cross-strait travel agencies to explore business cooperation and a chance for Taiwanese travel agencies to profit from the huge Chinese market, he said.
Ting said a cross-strait exchange pavilion will be set up for the first time at this year’s fair, which is being organized by the TATA.
Hundreds of representatives from the private and public sectors of the tourism industry in 15 Chinese provinces will participate in the exposition, including a 500-member group from Guangxi and others from Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Yunnan, Fujian and Hainan.
The TTE will run from Friday to Sunday at the Taipei World Trade Center, Ting said. He projected that there would be 600 stands and 150,000 visitors at this year’s event, twice the number as at last year’s.
Ting said discounts at this year’s fair will be 20 percent lower than last year and that tens of millions of dollars in business transactions will be generated from the sale of tour products and other travel services.
One travel agency is offering a four-day Hong Kong tour package for just NT$3,999 (US$122), while another is selling a three-day Tokyo tour for only NT$6,999, he said.
Nelson Lin(林鴻祥), marketing manager of the Macau Government Tourist Office in Taipei, said the fair was a good opportunity for Macau to promote its tourism.
He forecast that the total number of visitors from Taiwan to Macau would outstrip last year’s 1.33 million, given that 10 percent growth has already been recorded in February and March compared to the same period last year.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
RSS