As Taiwan prepares to reopen its border on Thursday, the operator of Taoyuan International Airport said Wednesday it was ready to welcome all foreign visitors, while many Taiwanese in China complained they were still unable to return home because air tickets were hard to come by with only a few flights being available across the Taiwan Strait at present.
Effective Oct. 13, Taiwan will lift the COVID-19 quarantine requirement for all arrivals but require a 7-day period of self-initiated epidemic prevention, with the number of arrivals to be limited to 150,000 per week.
On that day, the estimated number of inbound passengers using the airport will be 12,322, while the number of people departing from and transiting at the airport will be 6,238 and 5,586, respectively, according to Taoyuan International Airport Corp. (TIAC) data.
Meanwhile, the number of passenger flights leaving and arriving that day will be 270.
- Taiwan’s updated COVID-19 protocols for arriving travelers from Oct. 13
The airport has modified relevant measures in response to the easing of border restrictions starting Oct. 13, including the cancellation of visitor health certificate reviews, and lifting the ban on shopping and dining for inbound passengers, TIAC President and CEO Fan Hsiao-lun (范孝倫) told media reporters on Wednesday.
Other measures include reopening public service facilities such as shower rooms, outdoor smoking rooms, and the airport observation deck; and allowing asymptomatic inbound passengers to take public transportation, Fan said.
In an effort to have some facilities which were used for COVID-19 epidemic prevention restored to their pre-COVID state, nearly 600 cleaning staff were also mobilized to remove and de-glue nearly 8,000 “social distancing” floor stickers and seat stickers that were often seen during the epidemic, according to Fan.
Public transportation
As for public transportation, Fan said that in the future, passengers arriving at or departing from the airport can choose to take the airport MRT, passenger bus, taxi, rental car, drive themselves in a car, or be picked up and dropped off by friends and relatives at the airport, Fan said.
In addition, starting Oct. 13, the scheduled taxis at Taoyuan airport will resume charging taxi fares based on the meter, while subsidies for taxis, buses, and rental cars of the airport’s epidemic-prevention fleet used by inbound travelers will be canceled, Fan added.
Fan added that the airport company had coordinated with commercial service providers at the airport to gradually restore their original operating scale.
With the gradual lifting of border restrictions, their operating scale has gradually recovered from about 30 percent to 40 percent during the epidemic to 50 percent to 60 percent, according to Fan.
Flights to/from China
On the other hand, after learning about Taiwan’s new “0+7” COVID-19 policy, many Taiwanese businessmen based in China’s Shanghai and Kunshan are discussing plans to return home, with some having not come back since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020.
However, at present, the number of flights between Shanghai and Taiwan is still small, which makes it difficult to obtain an air ticket. Even if there is an available seat, the fare is still high, which discourages many Taiwanese businessmen from returning home, said Tsai Shih-ming (蔡世明), a Taiwanese businessman in Shanghai.
In such a situation, some Taiwanese businessmen have decided to wait to return to Taiwan for the Lunar New Year holiday early next year when cross-strait flights are expected to return normal, according to Tsai.
The new measures that require incoming travelers to observe only seven days of self-initiated epidemic prevention are also expected to boost the passenger volume at Taoyuan International Airport, Taiwan’s main national gateway.
In 2019, there was a record-high 48.68 million passengers who arrived at or departed from the airport but the number dropped to 7.43 million in 2020 due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and further fell to about 900,000 in 2021, according to Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) statistics.
The number of passengers using the airport began to rebound this year. For the first eight months, the airport served 1.57 million passengers, the CAA data showed.
Upbeat hotel sector
Also, Taiwanese hoteliers are upbeat about the outlook for tourism with overseas travelers set to return following the border reopening.
With more people traveling domestically, Fleur de Chine Spa Hotel in Nantou County saw its consolidated revenue in September increase by 69 percent to NT$175 million (US$5.5 million) from a year earlier.
For the first nine months, its consolidated revenue reached NT$1.39 billion, up 46 percent year-on-year, according to the hotel’s financial statement.
For the same month, Silk Hotel Group also saw its combined revenue rise by 34.5 percent year-on-year to NT$480 million, according to a company report.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel