The Ministry of Transportation and Communications is to promote “epidemic prevention tours” from Wednesday next week, when President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is to start her second term in office, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday.
At Taipei’s Nangang Railway Station (南港), where he was scheduled to inspect stores and restaurants, Lin yesterday morning announced three phases to gradually reopen the nation’s tourism market.
He spoke with reporters after a briefing by contractors managing the station’s floor space, saying that the tours would be the first phase.
Photo: Cheng Wei-chi, Taipei Times
“We plan to start promoting ‘epidemic prevention tours’ from Wednesday next week and we have been working with travel service operators on a range of tour arrangements,” Lin said.
“We also want tourism upgrade program trainees to set the example and show us how to arrange the tours,” he said. “This would be like field training for them.”
Asked when the government would move to the next phase of further opening up the nation’s tourism market by subsidizing tour groups and individual travelers on safe domestic tours, Lin said that would depend on the Central Epidemic Command Center.
However, the ministry has already made preparations to combine that phase with existing plans to expand a domestic tourism subsidy program, for which it has budgeted NT$2 billion (US$66.8 million), he said.
Various government agencies would also offer coupons to boost consumption, he added.
“We hope to ‘start a fire’ in this phase that would enable the tourism industry to begin recovering from the downturn,” Lin said.
“How strong the fire will be depends on how well the industry recovers. If the fire rages as soon as it is lit, then we can consider extending the time in this phase,” he said.
“However, if it appears that we will need more logs to just start the fire, then we would consider moving the [NT$2 billion] budget forward,” he added.
The third phase would be reopening the nation to international tourists, Lin said, adding that some people have suggested that Taiwan should form an international tourism alliance with countries that have succeeded in controlling the spread of COVID-19.
Regardless of whether the next phase involves epidemic prevention tours or government-subsidized safe tours, Lin said that the ministry would focus on subsidizing group tours on weekdays, otherwise tourist attractions and hotels would be inundated on weekends.
The ministry instituted preventive measures soon after the first COVID-19 cases were reported in Wuhan, China, in late December last year.
The ministry on Jan. 21 banned the entry of tour groups from Wuhan, while those already in Taiwan were asked to conclude their trips early and leave the nation immediately. It later barred all Chinese tour groups.
Travel by Taiwanese tourists to China has also been banned, while all travelers are required to fill out health declaration cards before boarding outbound flights.
The Tourism Bureau, which has coordinated with local governments to provide hotel or hostel rooms for travelers asked to undergo quarantine or isolation, said that the number of rooms available for such use has increased from 2,710 on March 25 to 7,000.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS