Ambassador Hotel Ltd (國賓大飯店) yesterday said it is planning to open more restaurants this year and its second budget hotel under the brand name Amba (意舍) in 2015.
However, the company, which runs four hotels and various restaurant brands in Taiwan, said it is facing rising competition in the domestic food and beverage sector.
“We may have a hard year [this year],” Ambassador Hotel Taipei (台北國賓大飯店) general manager Philip Lee (李維毅) told the Taipei Times yesterday.
Despite a steady rate of room occupancy at the group’s hotels, Lee said growth of sales in the food and beverage sector — which accounts for about half of the company’s revenue — is facing the challenges of an increase in the numbers of operators in the sector and still-weak private consumption.
Private consumption has not shown a significant rebound in the first half of this year, causing the company’s catering business in Taipei to register just a slight improvement in the first two months compared with a year ago, Lee added.
The company posted NT$282.87 million (US$9.48 million) in consolidated net income, or earnings per share of NT$0.77, last year, down from NT$427.6 million, or earnings per shares of NT$1.13, in 2011, the company said in a stock exchange filing on Tuesday.
Increased expenses and losses from a corporate bond issue and the termination of a build-operate-transfer project in Nanao (南澳), Yilan County, were major factors behind the declining profit last year, the company said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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