S Hotel, owned by Chinese celebrity businessman Wang Xiaofei (汪小菲), plans to expand its facility to include an outdoor garden and a bakery, its latest changes to win new customers and boost sales one-and-a-half years after opening.
The facility expansion and a less-expensive menu at its restaurant falls in line with strategy adjustments to make the hotel more affordable and popular among Taiwanese diners, especially fashion-savvy female customers, Wang said yesterday.
“Female Taiwanese know how to enjoy their lives and S Hotel aims to strengthen its appeal with this group by offering a bigger selection of food and beverages,” Wang told reporters in Taipei yesterday.
On Oct. 5, the hotel is to open an outdoor garden by French designer Phillippe Starck to increase food and beverage revenue, S Hotel marketing and communications director Jesse Day (戴永威) said.
The hotel in November is to open a bakery to take advantage of bread-related business opportunities, Day said, adding that there is no competitor in the vicinity.
The hotel of 103 guestrooms is on Dun Hua N Road next to Mandarin Oriental Hotel Taipei (台北文華東方酒店) and has set itself apart from the luxury neighbor as a boutique.
t recently introduced a new menu featuring French cuisines with average prices of NT$1,500 per set, down from NT$2,500 with an emphasis on Nordic dishes, Day said.
Taiwanese diners might need more time to embrace Nordic menus, said Wang, who doubles as the hotel’s general manager after the management contract with a French hotelier ended.
Wang is known for marrying Taiwanese actress and singer Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛). He previously ran an unprofitable Chinese restaurant called South Beauty (俏江南) in the city’s prime Xinyi District (信義).
Still, the Chinese businessman remains upbeat about the local hospitality industry, saying he plans to open a new hotel in Taipei under a different brand that would place more emphasis on fine arts.
“I enjoy doing business in Taiwan, where people are friendly and interesting,” Wang said, adding that the new hotel might come into being in one-and-a-half years.
S Hotel might see revenue and occupancy pick up 20 percent next quarter from this quarter with the arrival of the high-sales season, sales and marketing director Vita Chiu (邱妤庭) said.
The hotel’s occupancy rates averaged 66.83 percent in June, while daily room rates averaged NT$3,657, according to statistics provided by the Tourism Bureau.
The showings are not bad, but are not strong enough to turn a profit yet, Chiu said.
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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