Hotel operators have continued to launch new bakery stores and restaurant brands as they aim to boost sales in the dining sector and increase overall revenues.
The Landis Taipei Hotel Co Ltd (亞都麗緻大飯店) on Tuesday launched a new flagship store for its bakery brand Liz Gastronomie (麗緻坊) at the Paoching branch of the Far Eastern Department Store (遠東百貨) in Taipei.
It is the bakery’s third outlet, with the other two located at the Landis Taipei and the Dayeh Takashimaya Department Store (大葉高島屋百貨).
“We expect to expand the new bakery concept, which focuses more on young people, via this flagship store,” the hotel group’s business development division general manager Michelle Hsu (徐儷萍) told the Taipei Times.
Landis Taipei plans to launch its fourth bakery outlet next month in Hotel ONE Taichung (台中亞緻大飯店) — another brand under the hotel group — and one more outlet by the end of this year, Hsu said.
Hsu was hired to manage the Liz Dining Group (亞緻餐飲), the hotel group’s dining business, in December last year. At that time, she said the company planned to open at least five bakery outlets or restaurants in the next five years.
Besides bakeries, the hotel group is scheduled to open its first independent restaurant, which will offer Hangzhou-style cuisine, in the second half of this year.
Landis Taipei posted consolidated sales of NT$250.77 million (US$8.47 million) in the first quarter, up 2.85 percent from a year ago, with dining sales totaling NT$113.87 million, stock exchange data showed.
Other hotels, such as Formosa International Hotels Corp (晶華國際酒店集團), Ambassador Hotel Ltd (國賓大飯店) and Leofoo Tourism Group (六福旅遊集團), have already placed greater emphasis on the dining sector over the past few years.
For instance, Ambassador Hotel runs four hotels and several restaurant brands. The company also opened a second bakery under its Le bouquet Bread & Bakery (繽紛麵包房) brand in Taipei on Tuesday.
The company posted revenue of NT$824.92 million for the first three months of this year, up 5.3 percent from a year ago, stock exchange data showed.
In related news, Ambassador Hotel on Tuesday announced that it had won a bid for a hotel development project in Pingtung County, which may be the location of the hotel group’s sixth hotel in Taiwan.
The company, which currently runs four hotels under two brands, is set to invest about NT$1.2 billion to build a third hotel under the brand name Amba (意舍), which could open in 2016 at the earliest.
The build-operate-transfer project led by the Pingtung County Government under a 50-year lease is located in the Kenting National Park and the land is suitable for erecting a hotel and other related facilities, the company said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)