About 10,000 people marched through downtown Taipei yesterday afternoon calling on the government to help the tourism industry amid a drop in the number of Chinese tourists.
It was the first-ever protest organized by people and firms in the tourism industry, including travel agencies, tour guides, hoteliers, hostel operators, restaurant owners, tour bus companies and representatives of other businesses.
The march began at the Huashan 1914 Creative Park and headed toward Ketagalan Boulevard by way of Chungshiao E Road, Hanzhou S Road and Renai Road.
Photo: CNA
A travel agency manager from Kaohsiung surnamed Rong (容) said those who took part in yesterday’s protest were “only the tip of an iceberg,” adding that the situation was expected to worsen in the next three months.
“We want to tell the government that its new southbound policy is not going to be an immediate cure to the travel industry’s current plight,” she said.
Tourism operators from southern Taiwan chartered at least 30 buses to bring people to Taipei, Rong said, adding that Chiayi County has been the hardest hit by the drop in Chinese visitor numbers.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
Asked how bad the situation is, Rong said that some guides and bus drivers have been on unpaid furloughs for almost two months because there was no business from Chinese tour groups.
Alishan, a must-see destination for most of the Chinese tourists, now gets fewer than 10 tour buses per day, she said.
Boat owners at Sun Moon Lake (日月潭) are also hurting.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
“A tour guide used to be able to handle three tour groups every month, earning a monthly salary of between NT$50,000 and NT$100,000 [US$1,577 and US$3,153], but now they cannot do that anymore and they still have dozens of bills to pay. You can understand their anger and anxiety,” she said.
The NT$30 billion relief fund that the government is planning to spend to help the industry cannot possibly cover all the industry’s losses, she said.
A guide surnamed Lin (林) said that China’s National Day holiday is coming soon, and Japan and South Korea are trying to attract more tourists from China during that period.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
Only Taiwan is trying to push Chinese tourists away, he said, adding: “I really do not know what our government is thinking.”
Lin said he is willing to follow the government’s policy to attract more tourists from Southeast Asia, but it must provide complementary measures to help address the problems businesses are facing.
He said he has a mortgage of about NT$10 million and has not had any income for two months, while his friends who own tour buses are struggling to pay off the loans they took out to buy the vehicles.
A luxury goods store representative from Hualien, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the NT$30 billion is just a short-term solution.
“We want a fishing rod, not the government just providing us with fish,” she said.
Yesterday’s protest concluded with representatives of the travel industry delivering a petition to the Presidential Office.
The petition said that Taiwan attracted about 2 million Chinese tourists in tour groups last year, and the industry hoped about 1 million Chinese would come on group tours this year, representatives said.
However, that means the government needs to attract about 2 million more travelers from other countries to make up for the shortfall in Chinese tourists because Chinese spend about twice as much time in Taiwan as travelers from other countries, they said.
To make up such a huge shortfall, 12 suggestions were made, ranging from further streamlining visa application procedures for Southeast Asian tourists, allowing Chinese tourists to use their passports for a 72-hour transit in Taiwan before heading to a third country, offering subsidies to international tourists who spend at least two nights in central or southern Taiwan and raising the number of domestic travelers nationwide by giving out vouchers for weekday travel.
ENDEAVOR MANTA: The ship is programmed to automatically return to its designated home port and would self-destruct if seized by another party The Endeavor Manta, Taiwan’s first military-specification uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) tailor-made to operate in the Taiwan Strait in a bid to bolster the nation’s asymmetric combat capabilities made its first appearance at Kaohsiung’s Singda Harbor yesterday. Taking inspiration from Ukraine’s navy, which is using USVs to force Russia’s Black Sea fleet to take shelter within its own ports, CSBC Taiwan (台灣國際造船) established a research and development unit on USVs last year, CSBC chairman Huang Cheng-hung (黃正弘) said. With the exception of the satellite guidance system and the outboard motors — which were purchased from foreign companies that were not affiliated with Chinese-funded
PERMIT REVOKED: The influencer at a news conference said the National Immigration Agency was infringing on human rights and persecuting Chinese spouses Chinese influencer “Yaya in Taiwan” (亞亞在台灣) yesterday evening voluntarily left Taiwan, despite saying yesterday morning that she had “no intention” of leaving after her residence permit was revoked over her comments on Taiwan being “unified” with China by military force. The Ministry of the Interior yesterday had said that it could forcibly deport the influencer at midnight, but was considering taking a more flexible approach and beginning procedures this morning. The influencer, whose given name is Liu Zhenya (劉振亞), departed on a 8:45pm flight from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) to Fuzhou, China. Liu held a news conference at the airport at 7pm,
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
RSS