Landis Taipei Hotel (台北亞都麗緻飯店), the flagship property of Landis Hospitality Group (麗緻餐旅集團), has reported a significant pickup in room and restaurant revenues, although continuing border controls limited the scale of recovery.
“Business would grow nearly twofold this and next month, from the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in February and March, when foreign travelers abruptly dropped to zero and domestic tourists stayed home for fear of infections,” communications official Tracy Lee (李明穎) said by telephone yesterday.
Occupancy rates averaged 80 percent so far in the summer, recovering from 20 to 30 percent at the 41-year-old facility on Minquan E Road, one of Taiwan’s first five-star facilities, Lee said.
Taiwan’s quick control of the novel coronavirus outbreak, and assorted promotions and discount offers helped restore interest in domestic travel while the nation continues to keep foreign travelers out, Lee said.
The authorities have extended a ban on inbound and outbound travel until the end of next month due to soaring infections in most parts of the world.
Revenue from food and beverage sales almost recovered to pre-pandemic levels, after holding relatively resilient during the outbreak, Lee said.
The virus crisis has had a limited effect on Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant Tien Hsiang Lo (天香樓), fine-dining Paris 1930 (巴黎廳) and more affordable La Brasserie (巴賽麗廳), thanks to their gastronomic credentials, Lee added.
Particularly, Tien Hsiang Lo, which has won one-star Michelin recognition for two consecutive years, has been popular among gourmets, she said.
Despite the improvement, revenue declines are inevitable, as border controls are set to stay in pace for a while, Lee said.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) last week said that he is seeking to extend wage subsidies by another three to six months for hotels that rely heavily on foreign travelers.
Lin asked domestic travelers to patronize star-grade facilities in northern Taiwan in the meantime.
A package featuring room rates of NT$3,999 per night with equivalent gift vouchers has proven to be most popular among clients, Lee said.
The group would maintain a conservative business approach after shutting down Landis Taichung in March and the Tayih Landis Hotel Tainan (台南大億麗緻酒店) last month, she said.
Pause Landis Resorts (璞石麗緻溫泉會館) in New Taipei City’s Wulai District (烏來) is undergoing renovation, she added.
The group has not discussed whether to further downsize after summer, Lee said.
Industry leaders have said that many hotels in Taipei could exit the market if recovery remained elusive.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the