Formosa International Hotels Corp (FIHC, 晶華國際酒店集團) chairman Steven Pan (潘思亮) gave a bullish outlook for the nation’s hotel sector next year, saying that its business has started a rebound after hitting bottom in the first half of this year.
“The US and Japanese economies have both recovered, with sentiment in Europe having passed its lowest point already,” Pan told reporters after attending a Christmas ceremony in the business area around the Formosa Regent Taipei (台北晶華酒店) on Saturday.
Following the global economic recovery, the world’s tourism sector will flourish next year, Pan said, adding that Taiwan’s hotel industry will also benefit from the effects of the global economic situation.
In terms of Formosa Regent Taipei, Pan said the company has seen sales start picking up from the second half of this year, with demand for rooms and the food and beverage areas both up significantly this quarter.
“We expect to see room occupancy rates of more than 85 percent this month, with the hotel fully booked during the week of Lunar New Year holidays,” Pan said.
Meanwhile, Regent Taipei has seen all of its restaurants nearly fully booked every weekend through to the Lunar New Year holiday, showing additional signs of the hotel industry’s rebound, Pan added.
Pan expressed satisfaction with FIHC’s sales performance this year, as the company’s sales still posted a growth despite a sluggish sentiment in the first half of this year and Regent Taipei’s two-month renovation plan in the second half.
FIHC posted NT$5.16 billion (US$173.8 million) in consolidated revenue in the first 11 months of the year, up 3.95 percent from a year ago, its stock exchange data showed.
SinoPac Securities Investment Service (永豐金投顧) said FIHC’s expansion plan next year may continue raising its sales scale to pass the NT$6 billion mark annually next year.
The company aims to launch trial operation of two hotels under its fair-price brand Just Sleep (捷絲旅) later this month in Greater Kaohsiung and Hualien. It is planning to follow that by opening another three hotels next year, the brokerage house said in its latest report.
FIHC also plans to launch service of the Silks Place (晶英酒店) in Tainan City, the third hotel under the brand, in the first quarter next year, which may generate a total of NT$200 million in annual sales for the company, the report said.
Other than the Regent Taipei, the company currently operates two hotels under the brand of Silks Place brand and three under the Just Sleep brand.
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
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”