Leofoo Tourism Group (六福旅遊集團), a theme park, movie theater and hotel operator, yesterday said it would launch a luxury hotel in Taipei’s Nangang (南港) Train Station in the second half of next year.
The group currently operates four hotels under three brands nationwide and an apartment hotel in Taipei.
The new hotel, with more than 400 rooms, will bear the brand Courtyard under license from US-based Marriott International Inc, Leofoo Hotel general manager Tina Lin (林靜如) told a media briefing.
Lin said Leofoo Hotel (六福客棧), one of its hotels, is working on a renovation plan in a bid to raise its average room rate by NT$200 (US$6.50) to NT$300 from the current level of NT$2,500.
This could generate an additional NT$2 million in monthly sales for the hotel, based on its average occupancy rate of about 75 percent to 78 percent, Lin added.
The group is hoping that the planned changes could help it return to the black over the next three to five years.
The group posted a net loss of NT$173.11 million, or NT$0.52 per share, in the first three quarters of last year, company data showed.
The group is also banking on resource integration, and more cooperation between its marketing and sales divisions to improve its top line and bottom line in the long term.
“In the past, we did not really focus on cooperation between different hotels in the group,” said Anna Chou (周娜慈), executive assistant manager of marketing communication at Leofoo Tourism.
However, the new marketing team is seeking to create more joint marketing projects between hotels in the group, or even with the group’s amusement park, Leofoo Village (六福村), Chou said.
Chou said the group has begun to collect membership data from all of its hotels and the theme park, aiming to integrate the membership program in the future to improve synergy.
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