Taiwanese hospitality service provider Leefang Group’s (李方酒店管理集團) Hotel Indigo Kaohsiung Central Park (高雄中央公園英迪格酒店) is to be auctioned off in the foreclosure market after the sales of properties elsewhere failed to resolve the group’s cash strains.
The hotel with 129 guest rooms, which is in a 12-year management contract with InterContinental Hotels Group PLC, said in a statement that the auction would not affect its operations.
The brief statement came after local Chinese-language media over the weekend reported on the upcoming auction.
Photo: CNA
“The hotel maintains normal operations and will continue to deliver quality services,” Indigo Kaohsiung Central Park said, adding that its management team would give top priority to protecting the rights of hotel members and guests.
The fashion-minded property, which opened in central Kaohsiung in December 2016, is profitable, but Leefang Group’s debt problems have led to the foreclosure, local media said, without citing sources.
Financial stress has driven Leefang Group, which started as an accounting company and grew into a property investor and hospitality firm, to sell its Royal Seasons Hotel Taipei (皇家季節酒店) on Nanjing W Road and Airline Inn (頭等艙酒店) in Taipei’s Ximending (西門町) area.
The company’s founding couple, Lee Ming-sung (李銘松) and Fang Su-dei (方素蝶), have incurred considerable debt to finance a plan to convert an old retail complex they had acquired years earlier into a luxury hotel under the La Meridian brand in central Taichung, the reports said.
The couple for years poured money into renovating and decorating the planned hotel, but last year decided to quit the project after the hospitality industry was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, they said.
However, the decision came too late to reverse the group’s financial standing and creditors filed a foreclosure request for Indigo Kaohsiung, they added.
The couple also sold the Hengyang branch of the budget Space Inn (太空艙旅舍), which they own, and an apartment on Taipei’s Dunhua S Road to pay their debts.
Indigo Kaohsiung, with 15 floors above ground and three below, sits on a 384 ping (1,2670m2) plot of land, and has an asking price of NT$2.91 billion (US$102.14 million), foreclosure data showed.
The group is also seeking buyers for its hotel investment in Taichung at a price of NT$8 billion, as well as Space Inn’s Xinyi branch, the reports said.
The couple have made a fortune from property investments. They gained renown by selling a plot of land in Ximending to a local life insurer at an unprecedented price, raising their net worth to more than NT$10 billion, the reports said.
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