Ambassador Hotel Ltd (國賓大飯店) plans to increase the number of its budget Amba (意舍)-brand hotels and boost their sales contribution to 30 percent of the company’s total revenue, a company official said yesterday.
“We expect to have eight Amba hotels in three years,” Ambassador Hotel chairman Emmet Hsu (許育瑞) told reporters after signing a contract for a hotel development project led by the Pingtung County Government.
The company currently operates just one Amba hotel in Taipei’s Ximending (西門町) area, which was launched in March last year. It plans to launch two more Amba hotels in Taipei in 2015.
BOT MODEL
Under a build-operate-transfer (BOT) deal signed with the Pingtung County Government, the company will launch its fourth Amba hotel in the Kenting National Park in 2016, along with a 50-year leasing right.
Three more Amba hotels are being planned, two of which will likely be on the east coast, Ambassador Hotel president Hubert Lee (李昌霖) said.
SALES DRIVER
Ambassador Hotel’s consolidated revenue reached NT$1.3 billion (US$42.9 million) in the first five months of the year, up 4.05 percent from a year ago.
The company hopes the addition of more than 1,000 rooms following the Amba expansion plans over the next few years will help boost its sales and profit, vice president Bill Chen (陳榮輝) said, without giving numbers.
REGENT
In related news, Formosa International Hotels Corp (FIHC, 晶華國際酒店集團) yesterday said it would focus on hotel apartment management to promote the Regent brand overseas.
FIHC has adopted this business model for its 80-room hotel project in Porto Montenegro, Montenegro, which is scheduled to start operations in July next year, with Taiwan Sotheby’s International Realty in charge of sales of the 53 hotel apartments and FIHC providing management services.
FIHC chairman Steven Pan (潘思亮) said the company would also adopt this business model for some of its Regent brand villas in Bali, Indonesia.
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