With a new air link pact between Taiwan and China likely to take effect soon, Hong Kong’s tourism sector was concerned about being marginalized amid the changing situation in the Taiwan Strait, the Hong Kong-based Ming Pao newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Citing an executive of the Hong Kong Association of Travel Agents, the newspaper said the local tourism sector feared that it might lose about 1 million China-bound transit travelers from Taiwan per year — or two-thirds last year’s total number of Taiwanese transit passengers in the former British colony.
The new daily charter flights will make cross-strait travel more convenient, enabling Taiwanese travelers to head for many regions in China without having to detour via Hong Kong, the executive said.
Some Hong Kong tourism operators were worried that a large number of individual Chinese tourists will be attracted to Taiwan instead of Hong Kong, as several important Chinese cities, such as Shenzhen and Tianjin, have been added to the direct cross-strait air service program.
Others contend that Hong Kong should take advantage of the more direct cross-strait flights “to promote a special ‘greater China’ tour package featuring Hong Kong, Taiwan and Shenzhen.”
Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) chairman James Tien said the expanded Taiwan-China airlinks will certainly have a negative impact on the willingness of Taiwanese tourists to visit Hong Kong.
In an effort to mitigate the impact, the HKTB is considering an upgrade of the functions of its Taipei office, he said.
Taiwan and China signed four cooperation accords on Tuesday in Taipei, including one on the expansion of the cross-strait weekend charter flights that were launched in early July.
At present, all non-stop cross-strait charters must pass through the Hong Kong Flight Information Region, which adds to the travel time between cities in central and northern China and Taiwan.
Under the new agreement, the 36 non-stop charter flights that have been plying the Taiwan-China route Friday to Monday since July will be increased to 108 non-stop charters per week, with direct flights available every day of the week. The number of destinations in China will also be expanded to 21, up from the existing five.
Apart from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xiamen and Nanjing — which were included in the first phase of the cross-strait weekend charter program — the new pact will open services to cities scattered throughout China such as Shenzhen, Chengdu, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Tianjin and Dalian.
In the future, a flight between Taipei and Shanghai will take as little as 81 minutes, while a Taipei-Beijing flight will take 166 minutes.
Also See: More flights may not save airlines
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its