The nation’s three major hotels are offering special room packages or gift sets for the upcoming lunar holidays in a bid to boost revenues.
Regent Taipei (台北晶華酒店), in a departure from its traditional dinner and dessert promotions, is offering its guests a special room package for Chinese Valentine’s Day on Aug. 17 for an “interactive, unique and culturally significant experience,” it said in a statement.
It is collaborating with rental dress company Nenen Classic (念念留影館) to create a “modern, yet timeless experience” for its guests, drawing inspiration from classic glamour and traditional clothing, such as the qipao, the most iconic representation of oriental beauty, the hotel said.
Guests can purchase the qipao package for NT$7,999 for two people, which includes exclusive qipao and magua clothing, complimentary tea, Chinese Curio Box VIP room amenities and buffet breakfast, it said.
Guests are to start out at Nenen Classic, where they would select their clothing and accessories, and spend about half an hour for a photoshoot, the hotel said.
They can then take a walk in the neighborhood in traditional clothing and arrive at the hotel for afternoon tea, it said.
Nenen Classic, which is about five minutes’ walk from the hotel, is a qipao and magua rental shop that offers a vintage photography setting suitable for themed parties.
It is popular with tourists from Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Macau.
BEER FESTIVAL
Hotel Royal Chiao Hsi (礁溪老爺酒店) in Yilan County is to host an outdoor beer festival next month to highlight its geographic closeness to the mountains and the sea to offer guests “a quick escape from the hustle and bustle of city life,” the resort said in a statement.
Ambassador Hotel (國賓大飯店) is offering vouchers priced at NT$3,200 each that allows guests to stay at one of its three outlets in Taipei, Hsinchu and Kaohsiung, it said.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to