After five years of cooperation, Singapore-based General Hotel Management Ltd (GHM) yesterday announced it is to terminate its management agreement with the upscale resort The Lalu (涵碧樓), citing unbridgeable gaps in their operational values and constant interference from the hotel's owners.
"I am sad to announce that as of 12:01am on Nov. 24, GHM will no longer manage The Lalu Sun Moon Lake Taiwan ? we have taken this decision only after exhausting all possible means with which to persuade the owners to abide by the management agreement," said Kendall Oei, director of GHM, during a press conference in Taipei.
Described as the group's first divorce from any of its worldwide management partners, Oei said they had to announce the breakup as The Lalu's owner, Taichung-based Shining Group (鄉林集團), exerted incessant interference in finances, hiring and firing of staff and operational practices, preventing GHM from helping the the hotel to reach its true potential.
Opening its doors for business in March 2002, The Lalu has become one of the most famous resort hotels in Taiwan, receiving several prestigious awards including the honor of being listed in Conde Nast Traveler magazine's hot list for 2003.
"GHM is a victim of bad faith in the situation and will seek arbitration under Taiwanese law to ensure that justice is done," he added.
Despite the setback, Oei said that GHM has been in talks with several other hotel groups in Taiwan and expects to announce a new partner soon.
In response to GHM's accusations, Lai Cheng-i (賴正鎰), head of the Shining Group and chairman of The Lalu, blamed the Singaporean company for failing to satisfy customers' needs and not achieving the operational efficiency that was stipulated in their original contract.
"In particular, GHM transferred all the staff that we had spent time cultivating to other hotels, seriously affecting our process of internationalization," Lai said during a phone interview.
As the management team remains unchanged, Lai said, The Lalu's style, service quality and profitability will not be affected by its breakup with GHM.
The Lalu is estimated to rake in after-tax profits of NT$350 million (US$10.4 million) this year, up from last year's NT$300 million, Lai said.
After bidding farewell to GHM, The Lalu will immediately introduce the management expertise of the UK's Amayi, in which Lai's investment over the past year has made him their biggest shareholder. He refused to disclose his shareholding in the hotel management company.
With the help of Amayi, Lai expects to establish 30 hotels at home and abroad over the next decade, with projects already underway in Hualien and Taichung, as well as others in Beijing, Suzhou and Shanghai in China.
The Shining Group plans to issue real-estate investment trusts (REITs), priced at NT$2 billion each, in Hong Kong starting early next year to raise capital for its business expansion in China, Lai said.
The split with GHM, however, will not adversely affect the Shining Group's cooperation with the Aman Group, the parent company of GHM, in developing its yet-to-be-constructed hotel complex in Beijing's Forbidden City.
"I cannot speak for Aman, but I'm sure that our chairman, who is also the chairman of Aman, will be surprised to hear about this," Oei responded.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy