Nov 23, 2009
Going, going... gone
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THE year-end peak travel airlines and tours all booked up.
If the early birds get the worm, not to mention the choicest travel packages, heel-draggers might have to, well, literally drag their heels from travel agent to travel agent, if they hope to go on a vacation at all.
Retiree Gary Teo and his wife Ivy Seow, 63, walked around Chinatown for three hours, going from agency to agency, before finally securing the last two places on a group tour to Taiwan next month.
'We went to five travel agencies, even the smaller ones, but all the tours to Taiwan were fully booked,' said the 66-year-old. They got lucky at their last stop, Chan Brothers Travel.
The couple were adamant about going to Taiwan as they wanted to revisit the country they last went to about 30 years ago. Madam Seow, a secretary, said: 'We decided that we would just spend our holidays at home if we couldn't book the tour.'
With news of the economy back on the mend, demand for year-end travel is also bouncing back from its temporary slump in the earlier half of the year. But supply is struggling to keep up because the agencies had planned for fewer customers due to the poor economy earlier in the year and the H1N1 flu pandemic.
Read the full report in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times' LIFE!
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Going, going... gone
<!-- by line --><!-- end by line -->
<!-- end left side bar --><!-- story content : start -->
THE year-end peak travel airlines and tours all booked up.
If the early birds get the worm, not to mention the choicest travel packages, heel-draggers might have to, well, literally drag their heels from travel agent to travel agent, if they hope to go on a vacation at all.
Retiree Gary Teo and his wife Ivy Seow, 63, walked around Chinatown for three hours, going from agency to agency, before finally securing the last two places on a group tour to Taiwan next month.
'We went to five travel agencies, even the smaller ones, but all the tours to Taiwan were fully booked,' said the 66-year-old. They got lucky at their last stop, Chan Brothers Travel.
The couple were adamant about going to Taiwan as they wanted to revisit the country they last went to about 30 years ago. Madam Seow, a secretary, said: 'We decided that we would just spend our holidays at home if we couldn't book the tour.'
With news of the economy back on the mend, demand for year-end travel is also bouncing back from its temporary slump in the earlier half of the year. But supply is struggling to keep up because the agencies had planned for fewer customers due to the poor economy earlier in the year and the H1N1 flu pandemic.
Read the full report in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times' LIFE!
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