As part of its efforts to attract Southeast Asian and Muslim customers, Taipei Garden Hotel (台北花園大酒店) is to host a month-long Malaysian food festival, starting next week.
The hotel hopes the festival, which is to open on Monday and run through May 11, will boost revenue at La Fusion (六國餐廳) buffet restaurant by 10 percent to 20 percent, as well as promote appreciation of Malaysian food, chief food and beverage operating officer Steven Shih (石益鳴) said.
“We agree with the government that the industry should diversify its source of customers and reach out to Southeast Asian and Muslim guests to remain competitive and profitable,” Shih said on the sidelines of a news conference.
La Fusion’s revenue last year totaled NT$80 million (US$2.63 million), Shih said.
The number of travelers from Southeast Asia to Taiwan grew 16.2 percent from 1.42 million to 1.65 million last year, with the number of Malaysian visitors increasing by 20 percent, assistant director of marketing and communication Blythe Chao (趙芝綺) said, adding that those numbers warranted a shift of attention to travelers from Southeast Asia.
Malaysian chef Shahrom B. Sarri last month joined Taipei Garden to lead the food festival, which will highlight 40 popular dishes from different parts of Malaysia.
The Malaysian festival buffet has been priced at NT$699 per person on weekdays and NT$899 per person on weekends.
The hotel has two other restaurants, a lounge bar and several function rooms with food and beverage generating 54.95 percent of its overall revenue in February, Tourism Bureau data showed.
Occupancy rates reached 89.83 percent in February with daily room rates standing at NT$2,064, bureau data showed.
Taipei Garden, part of the Cosmos Hotel & Resorts Group (天成飯店集團), aims to achieve a 90 percent occupancy rate this year, Chao said.
The group, which operates Cosmos Hotel Taipei (台北天成大飯店), Sun Dialogue Hotel (天成文旅-繪日之丘), Bee House (蜂巢) and ICASA (回行旅), is aiming for a 3 percent increase in revenue this year after last year’s flat performance, Chao said.
France cannot afford to ignore the third credit-rating reduction in less than a year, French Minister of Finance Roland Lescure said. “Three agencies have downgraded us and we can’t ignore this cloud,” he told Franceinfo on Saturday, speaking just hours after S&P lowered his country’s credit rating to “A+” from “AA-” in an unscheduled move. “Fundamentally, it’s an additional cloud to a weather forecast that was already pretty gray. It’s a call for lucidity and responsibility,” he said, adding that this is “a call to be serious.” The credit assessor’s move means France has lost its double-A rating at two of the
AI BOOST: Although Taiwan’s reliance on Chinese rare earth elements is limited, it could face indirect impacts from supply issues and price volatility, an economist said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) has sharply raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth this year to 5.6 percent, citing stronger-than-expected exports and investment linked to artificial intelligence (AI), as it said that the current momentum could peak soon. The acceleration of the global AI race has fueled a surge in Taiwan’s AI-related capital spending and exports of information and communications technology (ICT) products, which have been key drivers of growth this year. “We have revised our GDP forecast for Taiwan upward to 5.6 percent from 4 percent, an upgrade that mainly reflects stronger-than-expected AI-related exports and investment in the third
Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽) shares surged to a seven-month high this week after local media reported that E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) had outbid CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) in the financially strained insurer’s ongoing sale process. Shares of the mid-sized life insurer climbed 5.8 percent this week to NT$6.72, extending a nearly 18 percent rally over the past month, as investors bet on the likelihood of an impending takeover. The final round of bidding closed on Thursday, marking a critical step in the 32-year-old insurer’s search for a buyer after years of struggling to meet capital adequacy requirements. Local media reports
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
RSS