The Tourism Bureau is studying the feasibility of offering subsidies to COVID-19 quarantine hotels as they transition back to normal operations after the government announced it would drop quarantine requirements for arrivals, Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) said yesterday.
The nation still has about 382 quarantine hotels, Wang said.
“We thank all quarantine hotels for playing an important role in containing COVID-19 in Taiwan,” he said. “The Ministry of Transportation and Communications and the Ministry of Labor are working together to address the personnel shortage problem facing hoteliers. I also ask the Tourism Bureau to study the feasibility of subsidizing quarantine hotels as they transition back to being a normal hotel.”
Photo: CNA
The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) last week announced that international arrivals would no longer be required to quarantine after its new policy takes effect on Oct. 13, the bureau said in a statement on Monday night.
The new policy is the government’s response to the latest developments in the COVID-19 pandemic and the public’s hopes for life returning to normal, it added.
As such, hotels that were previously used for quarantine purposes should prepare to gradually shift back to normal operations, it said.
More than 860,000 people have stayed in quarantine hotels since the government implemented the quarantine policy for international arrivals, the bureau said, adding that the cumulative subsidies for quarantine hotels have exceeded NT$6 billion (US$188.8 million).
During the Lunar New Year holiday, hoteliers provided 32,000 rooms per day to meet travelers’ demand, with the average occupancy rate reaching a peak of 80 percent, the bureau said.
The number of quarantine hotel rooms has fallen to 24,000 per day due to changes in quarantine policy, with the average occupancy rate at about 60 percent, it said.
The Executive Yuan has asked the bureau to help hotels transition and prepare to host domestic and international travelers when the new quarantine policy is implemented, it said.
“We are working with the CECC to develop supporting measures for the new quarantine policy. We are also studying incentives and subsidies that could be provided to hoteliers, which would be announced once they are finalized,” the bureau said.
The heads of three major US banks on Wednesday pledged that they would withdraw from the Chinese market if Washington imposed sanctions on Beijing in response to an invasion of Taiwan. JP Morgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, Bank of America chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan and Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser told lawmakers at a hearing of the US House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services in Washington that the three banks would follow the guidance of the US government to exit China if necessary. The three bankers made the pledge after US Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer asked the three if they
HIGH STAKES: An attack on Taiwan could prompt a joint response from the US and Japan, and trigger a global conflict that could bring down the CCP, Liu Tai-ying said The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would not be able to launch an invasion of Taiwan for at least another 10 years, Taiwan Research Institute founder Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英) said on Friday. To occupy Taiwan, China needs to transport at least 300,000 to 400,000 troops across the Taiwan Strait during battle, but it would lack the ability to do so for at least another decade, said Liu, a former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) treasurer and a close aide to former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). The challenges that China would face during an attempted invasion of Taiwan would be even greater than those
CHINA CRITIC: Prime ministerial candidate Giorgia Meloni, the front-runner in today’s election, said that she would not renew a Belt and Road Initiative deal with Beijing Italian lawmaker Giorgia Meloni, the front-runner to become the country’s next prime minister, is expected to reverse course on Italy’s support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative and strengthen ties with Taiwan if a coalition headed by her party wins the country’s general election today. “Without any doubt, if there is a center-right government, it is sure that Taiwan will be an essential concern for Italy,” Meloni told the Central News Agency in an interview. Italians are to vote in a snap election triggered by the resignation of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi following a failed attempt to get his coalition partners
Taiwanese on average first use pornographic material at the age of 14, an international survey found on Wednesday. Researchers at National Cheng Kung University, who conducted the survey in the nation, said 50.2 percent of Taiwanese respondents said they used pornographic material two to three times per month over the past year. Lin Chung-ying (林宗瑩), an associate professor at the university’s Institute of Allied Health Sciences, said the results indicate that Taiwanese are less sexually active than people in other countries, especially in the West. Taiwanese on average masturbate 10 percent less often than respondents from other nations in the survey, Lin said. The