Travel agents on Thursday threatened to protest the inauguration in May if the government does not explain its legal basis for renewing a ban on tours to China.
The Tourism Administration on Wednesday said it was to cancel a plan to reopen group tours to China, as Beijing had not reciprocated Taiwan’s show of goodwill.
The agency had originally planned to reopen tours on March 1 following a suspension due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Taiwanese who have already paid for tours to China between March 1 and May 31 could still go, but a complete ban would take effect on June 1, it said.
The announcement sent travel agents into a panic, Travel Agent Association of Taiwan vice chair Eric Wu (吳雁輝) told a news conference at Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) headquarters in Taipei.
Tours to China contribute significantly to the domestic tour industry’s income, he said.
Already, 70 to 80 percent of tours in June have been booked, and bookings have already begun for summer tours, Wu said.
Legal restrictions for the pandemic have been lifted, he said, asking the government to explain its legal basis for banning group tours, especially when individual travel is allowed.
Wu said that many tour operators have already told him they plan to protest at the inauguration on May 20 if a reasonable explanation is not given.
The Democratic Progressive Party government said it would lift the ban before the election, only to renege on its promise less than a month after, KMT Legislator Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇) said.
Separately, Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) said that Taiwan has reciprocal tourism relationships with the rest of the world.
China has not shown any goodwill since Taiwan made the decision to reopen tours, and even unilaterally decided to alter flight routes near Taiwan, he said.
The minister also said that tour operators can merge their summer tours with those leaving before May 31.
Additional reporting by CNA
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
Carrefour Taiwan is to begin using a new name from the start of July, but it cannot divulge the name until then, the chairman of the supermarket chain's parent company said today. President Chain Store Co chairman Lo Chih-hsien (羅智先) was asked by reporters after a shareholders' meeting to confirm whether the company has settled on a new name for the supermarket brand. In March, the government-registered name of two Carrefour Taiwan branches was quietly changed to "Le Chia Kang" (樂家康) in Chinese, raising speculation that has been selected as the name. Lo said that because of local regulations and contractual obligations, the
RSS