POST-HOLIDAY SLUMP:
The Tourism Bureau said that it respects the decisions, but urged operators to thoroughly disinfect their premises before accepting regular guests

• By Shelley Shan / Staff reporter

Thirty-nine hotels across Taiwan have stopped accepting guests who need to quarantine due to COVID-19 pandemic rules, as demand has declined after the Lunar New Year holiday, the Tourism Bureau said yesterday.

The demand for quarantine hotel rooms surged after the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) on Dec. 14 last year implemented a special quarantine policy for overseas Taiwanese returning home for the holiday, which ended on Sunday.

They were required to stay in quarantine hotels or government quarantine facilities for seven to 14 days, depending on their COVID-19 vaccination status. The policy is to end on Feb. 28.

Photo: CNA

Bureau statistics showed that 32,000 quarantine hotel rooms were available before the start of the holiday.

By Saturday, the number had dropped to about 30,000, with the occupancy rate shrinking to 37 percent from 50 percent in early December.

Most of the hotels opting out of the quarantine services are in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung, the bureau said.

Of the 2,000 quarantine rooms at those hotels, 800 were only available until Monday last week, it added.

Hotels that offered quarantine services should be disinfected for more than one day before accepting regular guests again, it said.

“Hoteliers make adjustments based on demand, and we respect their decisions,” bureau Deputy Director-General Chou Ting-chang (周廷彰) said.

In other news, Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport was yesterday awarded Airports Council International’s The Voice of the Customer prize, for “listening and adapting to customers during the pandemic.”

The Montreal-based organization last year began recognizing airports valuing input from passengers and recognized the efforts made by Taiwan’s largest airport for a second time in a row.

To receive the recognition, an airport must collect data for three quarters or longer and quickly adapt to changing demands of passengers, the airport operator said.

“Although the pandemic has caused the airport’s passenger volume to drop dramatically, we continue to listen to travelers and have offered facilities that would reduce their risks of contacting COVID-19, such as setting up ultraviolet bacteriostatic cabins to disinfect inbound passengers, adding ultraviolet germicidal lamps to the air-conditioning system in airport terminals and deploying ultraviolet disinfection robots in high-risk areas inside terminals,” it said.

As the International Air Transport Association has forecast that global passenger numbers would in 2024 return to 2019 levels if the pandemic continues to abate, the airport operator said that it would prepare for the expected recovery by enforcing the CECC’s disease prevention measures and ensuring that the planned Terminal 3 and a third runway would be completed as scheduled.

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