TAIPEI: Business has never been better for Chang Shih-Chun, a tour guide, for the past five year. His biggest headache was the scarcity of customers. That's not the case now. Since Taiwan opened tourism to mainlanders last year, Chang has been struggling to keep up with the work.

Experienced tour guides are working non-stop over the past couple of months, and raking in at least NT$46,000 a month, he said.

Rushing from one scenic spot to another, with gaggles of tourists in tow, is physically demanding. Every tour guide carries a pack of various tonics and throat candy, he noted.

Prior to the outbreak of A (H1N1) influenza, the number of tourists from the mainland was over 3,000 daily.

Straits Exchange Foundation Secretary-General Kao Koong-lian estimated that the number of mainland visitors this year will reach 800,000, adding NT$20 billion to Taiwan's revenues.

As mainlanders swarm in, Taiwan's travel sector is showing signs of strain. A shortage of tour guides is only one example.

Taiwan's Tourist Guide Association estimated that only half of 8,000 licensed tour guides have any experience.

Retirees and students get licenses to be tour guides but not all have worked in the field, said middle-aged Li Da-min.

These days, the guides with zero hands-on experience are out in full force. "The grey-haired novice tour guides like myself" have become the norm at well-known tourist destinations, Li said.

Li admitted he's made so many gaffes since he started conducting tour groups in February that he's become the butt of jokes among fellow guides. "I didn't even know where the restaurants and bathrooms are in Alishan," he said.

Alishan, also known as Mount Ali, is a famous mountain resort in central Taiwan.

But the consequences of inexperienced guides are no joke, Chang pointed out. Many mainland tourists are senior citizens. Often having to cover 200 kilometers per day, their health must be taken into consideration. "Can the inexperienced guides or agencies handle the unexpected situation?" he asked.

More conspicuous is the shortage of tour buses. The report of mainlanders stranded for a day without buses available to pick them up touched off a debate in the Legislative Yuan on Taiwan's capacity for receiving mainland tourists.

Taiwan Car Rental Co general manager Hsu Meng-yu said incidents like that often are not the result of money shortages. During travel peaks, the daily rental for a tour bus runs up to NT$13,000. "There're no buses for agencies that couldn't pay up," he said.

The shortage is easing since "the Ministry of Transportation and Communications" (MOTC) relaxed the requirement that tour buses transporting mainland tourists be less than seven years old. Now buses manufactured after 1999 are permitted to transport tourists. The number in the fleet has risen from 5,300 to about 6,700.

There's still a more deeply-rooted problem: low-priced packages have emerged from the fierce competition.

Some low-budget tour agencies can't meet expenses so they resort to trickery that can compromise the interests of tourists.

Time spent at scenic spots is cut back. Travelers become unwilling visitors to various tourist traps that kick back commissions on sales to low-end operators.

Taiwan needs to re-focus on packaging better quality tours, rather than trying to inflate the number of mainland tourists, said Fan Shi-ping, an associate professor of National Taiwan Normal University.

"Otherwise, they won't want to come to Taiwan," he said.

China Daily/CNA

(HK Edition 06/25/2009 page2)