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Last year, travel agents only suffered losses from fewer foreign travelers, but domestic travel has also been suspended this year, it said

  • By Cheng Wei-chi and Jake Chung / employee reporter with employee author

A tourism industry group yesterday criticized the government’s COVID-19 special aid funding to tourism, saying the government had provided less money to the industry than it did last year despite a worse outbreak situation.

Travel Quality Assurance Association President Tony Hsu (許 禓 哲) said at an online press conference that the country’s tourism industry has indefinitely suspended all overseas group travel due to the pandemic.

Most tourist offices have been able to keep basic operations going, but with domestic tourism also being suspended since last month and with less aid than last year, the association, which represents more than 3,926 travel agents, has received complaints from its members, Hsu said.

Photo courtesy of the Travel Quality Assurance Association

The Executive Yuan’s aid budget was NT $ 694 million (US $ 25 million) this year to subsidize travel agency operating expenses and employee wages from May to July. Travel agent grants for suspended travel totaled NT $ 154 million or NT $ 10,000 per group for a maximum of eight groups per agent.

Chen Yi-hsuan (陳怡璇), assistant director of legal affairs for the association, said last year’s aid raised NT $ 300,000 per travel agent, adding that she does not understand why subsidies would decrease in the face of a worsening outbreak situation .

The allocated subsidies are worse than the package presented by the Ministry of Economy (MOEA), she said, adding that the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MOTC), which oversees the tourism office, should try to understand the tourism ecosystem.

Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times

Association spokesman Lee Chi-yueh (李奇嶽) said that subsidies for group trips should not be a fixed amount, but should be based on the size of the group trips.

Corporate travel, government events, resident activities, and graduation trips are the four main categories for domestic group travel, with student and government travel often involving hundreds of people per group, causing huge losses for travel agents forced to take the tours, Lee said.

Travel agents typically don’t require deposits from large tour groups, which prevents companies from applying for subsidies because they can’t prove they have refunded customer deposits, Lee said.

The association said the MOTC should conform to MOEA subsidies and offer a flat rate of NT $ 10,000 per employee and NT $ 10,000 to 50,000 depending on group size for losses due to suspended group travel.

The MOTC should allow travel agents to apply for subsidies for all operations as the country entered a level 3 COVID-19 alert rather than a hard deadline for Jan.

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