FIH Regent Group (FIH, 晶華國際酒店集團), which runs the Formosa Regent Taipei (晶華酒店), has joined forces with a Chinese developer to open a five-star hotel in Harbin, apparently unfazed by the economic slowdown in China.
FIH chairman Steven Pan (潘思亮) signed the partnership deal with Harbin Huahong Realty Development Co (哈爾濱地產開發) in Taipei on Wednesday, as FIH looks to deepen its presence in the Chinese market.
Under the brand Regent Place Harbin, the 42-story hotel is to have 284 rooms, three restaurants and other amenities as part of an integrated commercial complex that also includes upscale office space, movie theaters and private houses on a 400,000m2 plot of land, the group said in a statement.
“The development project is targeting high-net-worth customers whose numbers are growing fast in the largest city of northeastern Heilongjiang Province,” an FIH spokesperson said by telephone.
Regent Place Harbin is likely to charge room rates slightly lower than the Regent Beijing, which opened in 2008 with average room rates in the range of NT$8,000 to NT$12,000 per night, the spokesperson said, although the group has yet to set prices.
FIH also plans to open the Regent Place Xian in October next year and the Regent Chongqing two months later, which would make the Regent Place Harbin its fourth hotel in China, the statement said.
Huahong Realty chairman Zhang Hongshan (張鴻善) flew to Taipei to sign the pact.
FIH shares yesterday closed down 0.44 percent in Taipei trading, better than the TAIEX’s 1.09 percent fall. They have fallen by 33.58 percent so far this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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