Forty-eight travel agencies had filed for temporary closure or corporate dissolution as of last month due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tourism Bureau statistics showed yesterday.
Eighteen filed for temporary closure and 30 for dissolution, compared with the 18 agencies and 25 firms that did so respectively, for the whole of last year.
In 2018, eight agencies filed for temporary closure and 49 for dissolution, bureau statistics showed.
The government has launched bailout packages, injecting more than NT$10 billion (US$3238.56 million) into the tourism sector, but the bureau late last month said that it would continue travel restrictions imposed earlier this year banning foreign tourists from visiting Taiwan and Taiwanese from going abroad, as part of the nation’s COVID-19 prevention efforts.
SET Tour yesterday said that it had decided not to renew the leases on its 20 stores in northern Taiwan after they expire later this year, and employees at those sites would be transferred to other stores.
Many travel agents have submitted their resignations due to the reduced sales opportunities this year, and it was not planning on hiring new staff, it said.
While it had initially closed all of its stores on weekend to help reduce costs during the pandemic, one-third of the stores have resumed weekend services since May, when the domestic tourism market began picking up, the company said.
Many travel agencies closed their stores during the disease-prevention period, but customers now appear to prefer placing orders online anyway, Life Tour said.
It has closed three of its 23 stores nationwide, it said.
Eight out ezTravel’s 10 stores in Taiwan have been shut, but the company said that 90 percent of its products are sold online, and it aims to fully develop its digital services.
Meanwhile, the ratio of revenue from domestic and overseas tour packages is usually two to eight, so even though the local tourism market has begun to recover, the loss of overseas travel business remains substantial, one travel agent said on condition of anonymity.
Organizing one national referendum and 26 recall elections targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators could cost NT$1.62 billion (US$55.38 million), the Central Election Commission said yesterday. The cost of each recall vote ranges from NT$16 million to NT$20 million, while that of a national referendum is NT$1.1 billion, the commission said. Based on the higher estimate of NT$20 million per recall vote, if all 26 confirmed recall votes against KMT legislators are taken into consideration, along with the national referendum on restarting the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, the total could be as much as NT$1.62 billion, it said. The commission previously announced
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday welcomed NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s remarks that the organization’s cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners must be deepened to deter potential threats from China and Russia. Rutte on Wednesday in Berlin met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Germany’s accession to NATO. He told a post-meeting news conference that China is rapidly building up its armed forces, and the number of vessels in its navy outnumbers those of the US Navy. “They will have another 100 ships sailing by 2030. They now have 1,000 nuclear warheads,” Rutte said, adding that such
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The cosponsors of a new US sanctions package targeting Russia on Thursday briefed European allies and Ukraine on the legislation and said the legislation would also have a deterrent effect on China and curb its ambitions regarding Taiwan. The bill backed by US senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal calls for a 500 percent tariff on goods imported from countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports — targeting nations such as China and India, which account for about 70 percent of Russia’s energy trade, the bankroll of much of its war effort. Graham and Blumenthal told The Associated Press
RSS