Cosmos Hotel & Resorts Group (天成飯店集團) yesterday said that it is to part with ICASA hotel by Cosmos Creation (回行旅) in Taichung, as the landlord has sold the property and terminated the lease contract.
From tomorrow, the Taipei-based hotel operator would not have anything to do with ICASA, the second property under the group’s Cosmos Creation (天成文旅) brand after the Sun Dialogue Hotel (繪日之丘) in Chiayi.
“We remain interested in Taichung and are in talks to open a new boutique hotel in 2022,” Cosmos Hotel & Resorts Group said in a statement.
The statement came amid market speculation that Cosmos plans to exit Taichung because of disappointing operations.
The reports are inaccurate, as ICASA improved in terms of revenue over the past one-and-a-half years, despite sharp competition in central Taiwan, the group said.
The local hotelier market last month saw the entry of The Place Taichung (台中大毅老爺行旅), and more facilities are in the pipeline to take advantage of tourism demand and enhancements to infrastructure.
Situated near Fengchia Night Market (逢甲夜市), ICASA offers 100 rooms targeting family and independent tourists with middle-level travel budgets.
The property owner is to keep the ICASA trademark.
Despite the loss of the contract, Cosmos is to go ahead with plans to open a resort in Hualien County’s Ruisuei Township (瑞穗) next quarter.
Last month, it launched Hua Shan Din (華山町) in downtown Taipei, also under the Cosmos Creation brand.
The series emphasizes local culture and customized designs to differentiate its properties from urban affiliates like Cosmos Taipei (台北天成大飯店) and the Taipei Garden Hotel (台北花園大酒店), in line with the group’s multi-brand marketing strategy.
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],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
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