Travel agencies that have not benefited from the opening to Chinese tourists yesterday accused the Travel Agent Association (TAA) of handing a list to China’s China International Travel Service (CITS) stipulating which travel agencies in Taiwan are and are not allowed to arrange trips for Chinese tourists.
Since the opening of increased tourism, only a dozen of the nation’s 177 certified travel agencies have handled arrangements for Chinese tourists, travel agents said, adding that interested parties may be attempting to monopolize the market.
The travel agencies said that when CITS applies for Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan, they must provide a list of the travel agencies in Taiwan who will receive the tourists.
In response to the allegations, the TAA and Tourism Bureau said no list of tourist agencies had been handed to CITS. Bureau section chief Chang Hsi-tsung (張錫聰) said the number of Chinese visitors entering the country was not enough for every agency to reap the benefits.
If you divide the number of Chinese tourists entering the country by the number of travel agencies in Taiwan that are certified to handle them, it is not surprising that some travel agencies are left empty-handed, Chang said, adding that these agencies mistakenly believed that they had been blacklisted.
Chang said he believed that more travel agencies would gradually see the benefits of Chinese tourists.
TAA secretary-general Hsu Kao-ching (�?y) said that whether a travel agency receives business or not depends on business skills and marketing, adding that he had no knowledge of any blacklist.
Meanwhile, some travel agencies expressed concern about working with businesses in China to arrange trips for Chinese tourist groups.
Some agents said off the record that they were concerned that Chinese travel agencies would exploit the competition among Taiwanese travel agents to increase their own profits. It was still too early to know whether the influx of Chinese tourists would bring significant profits, they said.
Japanese travel agencies were willing to pay top dollar for good quality and services, they said, but it may be hard to get a decent price from tough-bargaining Chinese travel agencies.
Local travel agents said it would not be wise to put all their eggs in one basket, adding that they would continue to seek tourist groups from other countries.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS