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.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
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