While pilot tours to Palau were sold out within one week of being made available for purchase, some tour operators said only half of the tours in the next three batches were sold, as high costs might have turned away some potential customers.
Palau became the first country that Taiwanese can visit for tourism amid the COVID-19 pandemic after the two countries created a “travel bubble” earlier this month. The first tour group is to depart for Palau on Thursday.
According to the guidelines issued by the Central Epidemic Command Center, travelers to Palau must join group tours and adhere to self-health management guidelines for 14 days upon their return.
Photo courtesy of KKDay
China Airlines would be the sole carrier for the group tours in the first two weeks, offering two flights per week.
The six travel operators selling package tours to the Micronesian country are Lion Travel, Phoenix Tours, G. Tours, Life Travel & Tourist Service Co, DTS Group and online travel platform KKDay.
A total of 110 pilot tour travelers are scheduled to depart from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 2:30pm on Thursday and arrive in Palau at 6:20pm, the airline said.
Phoenix tours said while its pilot tour packages have been sold out, sales for the next three batches have been below 50 percent, adding that high prices and the 14-day self-health management requirement make it difficult to promote the tours.
“We will discuss relaxing the self-health management requirement with the Tourism Bureau. It makes it difficult for us to sell the tour packages, and it could cause financial losses,” the travel agency said.
Phoenix Tours had previously promoted a luxury four-day tour to Palau for NT$69,000, including accommodation at a five-star hotel and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for COVID-19.
It is now promoting a four-day tour that costs NT$49,000, which includes accommodation at a regular hotel, while travelers need to pay for their PCR tests.
Lion Travel said people wanted to join the pilot tours because they wanted to be part of a significant moment.
Although more than 1,000 people made reservations for the pilot tours, only a small number followed through with payment, while many passed on the offer after they learned about the prices, it said.
The agency said it has sold 70 to 80 percent of the tours in the second batch, while about 60 percent of the tours in the third and fourth batches have been sold.
A tour operator who spoke on condition of anonymity said the bureau kept changing the destinations that are open to tourists, which could not be finalized by Friday.
Many travel agencies were concerned about the perception of customers if they did not strictly follow the publicized itineraries, the operator said.
In addition to high flight and accommodation costs, the bureau has raised boat rental fees from US$1,200 to US$1,700 per boat, with each boat carrying only 17 passengers, down from 25, the operator added.
Boat operators would not be serving lunch aboard as they used to, the operator said.
The Palauan government would have to bear greater responsibility if the “travel bubble” turns out to be a failure, the operator added.
Some people said they would be more receptive to a five-day tour to Palau at a cost of NT$30,000, the operator said.
Given the high tour prices, it is better to travel to some of the nation’s outlying islands and wait until the pandemic is over, the operator added.
KKDay is offering a four-day package at NT$29,999 to people who pre-order “travel bubble” tours, likely the cheapest offering on the market.
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
TAIWAN ADVOCATES: The resolution, which called for the recognition of Taiwan as a country and normalized relations, was supported by 22 Republican representatives Two US representatives on Thursday reintroduced a resolution calling for the US to end its “one China” policy, resume formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and negotiate a bilateral Taiwan-US free trade agreement. Republican US representatives Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th District were backed by 22 Republican members of the US House of Representatives. The two congressmen first introduced the resolution together in 2021. The resolution called on US President Donald Trump to “abandon the antiquated ‘one China’ policy in favor of a policy that recognizes the objective reality that Taiwan is an independent country, not
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)