Agencies angry at rules on hosting Chinese

They said that the requirement that operators spend no less than US$80 daily for each member of a Chinese tourist group should be lifted.

The protest came one day after the Tourism Bureau slapped a fine of NT$60,000 (US$1,820) on a local travel agent for failing to provide minimum quality service to a group of Chinese tourists.

The MarcoPolo Travel Service was fined because it had arranged for the tourists to stay at a substandard hotel in central Taiwan, leading to one of the tourists being bitten by a rat.

The protestors are also angry that the Travel Agent Association of the R.O.C. Taiwan is in charge of screening the hosting arrangements of travel agents; the requirement that local travel agents post a NT$2 million bond with the association is similarly unpopular, and the association has requested that the government handle the screening procedures.

The requirement that travel agencies which have not been established for at least five years not host Chinese tourist groups should also be scrapped, they demanded.

Tourism Bureau Deputy Director-general Su Tsang-yang, in receiving the protestors, said that requiring minimum expenditures for each member of Chinese groups is aimed at ensuring quality service, and asked for the understanding of travel service operators.

Su also urged the Travel Agent Association to be fair when screening the itineraries travel service operators must submit to host Chinese tour groups in order to a avoid conflict of interest.

The protestors later went to the Legislative Yuan to make their grievances heard.

The Tourism Bureau, in anticipation of a rush of Chinese tourists to Taiwan on sightseeing tours, promoted a quality control campaign with travel service operators last November. The campaign calls for travel operators to promise to spend no less than US$80 daily for each member of a Chinese tourist group, requires that the age of tour buses used by Chinese tourist groups not exceed seven years, and that there be no self-pay tours during the journey.

The campaign came one month after a major traffic incident involving Chinese tourists which left six dead, including a Taiwanese tour guide, and 15 injured.

The tourists from Dalian in Liaoning Province were en route to Shuili from Tungpu in central Nantou County when one of the two buses they were traveling in skidded off the Central Cross-Island Highway and plunged into a ravine.

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