Many of Taiwan’s bigger travel agencies have been cutting costs to cope with the ongoing international travel hiatus due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
For Lion Travel, that meant several top management members stepping down to make way for new blood. Others like Lifetour laid off 20 percent of its staff, and Dragon Tours announced it would be introducing a pay cut for employees.
Along with the ongoing pandemic, the Transportation Ministry’s “bailout plan 2.0” came to an end last month, a combination that proved too much to handle for some travel operators. The plan provided instant funding for Taiwan’s transportation and tourism industries, two of the many that were hit hardest by the outbreak.
In answer to the tourism sector’s woes, Transportation Minister Lin Chia-lung said the tourism industry needs to adapt to the current travel limitations and rely more on citizens embarking on domestic trips because the outbreak is still pretty serious in other countries.
The Transportation Ministry will be launching a bailout plan 3.0 for tour operators intending to keep business going. The government will be giving these companies three more months’ subsidies to pay their employees. But there will also be those that decide to exit the industry.