Local travel agencies yesterday painted a conservative outlook on the business opportunities that the opening up of the nation to Chinese tourists would bring, citing Beijing’s cap on the number of Chinese tourists allowed to visit Taiwan and a minimum spending requirement.
“Compared with trips to Europe, where tourists spend US$120 per night on average, several Chinese travel agencies have complained that our charges are too high,” Jack Lin (林健興), manager of the domestic tour department at Southeast Travel Service Co (東南旅行社), said yesterday.
The Tourism Bureau requires Chinese tourists to spend a minimum of US$80 per night, which would add up to US$560 for an eight days, seven nights tour.
However, Phoenix Tours International Inc (鳳凰旅行社) general manager Anthony Liao (廖文澄) said the minimum was acceptable.
The company offers three different pricing packages for a 10-day tour, ranging from US$800 to US$1,200.
Although the government has set a limit of 3,000 Chinese tourists per day, the Beijing government permits only 1,000 Chinese tourists to visit the nation per day.
Lion Travel Service Co (雄獅旅行社) said it was difficult to estimate the business opportunities that the Chinese tourists would bring because of the restrictions and the government’s “ever-changing” policy.
“Lion Travel Service is more conservative about the Chinese tourist market. We think that it will take at least another three months for the situation to become clearer,” said Roxy Luo (羅旭亭), a public relations official at Lion Travel Service.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said on Thursday that whether the launch of cross-strait charter flights would help boost the nation’s economy required “further observation.”
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