InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (IHG) yesterday launched a boutique facility in Taipei, saying that there is still healthy demand for international hotel brands, despite increasing competition.
Kimpton Daan Hotel, the first property under the Kimpton brand in Asia, reflects the group’s confidence in Taiwan and the region, where the hospitality industry is gaining steam, Kimpton Daan general manager Mathew Lim (林原衛) told reporters.
“IHG, with its vast, loyal membership, has supplied more than 60 percent of clientele since the facility’s soft opening on March 1,” Lim said.
Lim aims to achieve an occupancy rate of 50 percent in the first year of operations and raise it by 10 percent in the second year.
With daily room rates ranging from NT$7,000 to NT$8,000, the hotel’s 129 guest rooms would prove competitive and attractive to fashion-savvy travelers from around the world, as they are more accessible than the W Hotel in the city’s Xinyi District (信義), Lim said.
The convenient location near Pacific Sogo Department Store’s (太平洋崇光百貨) Zhongxiao E Road branch would help Kimpton Daan gain rapid popularity among travelers who desire to explore Taipei, he said.
The hotel occupies an entire 14-story building on a government-owned plot of land, on which local developer Radium Life Tech Co (日勝生) won the right to build luxury apartments, but failed to find buyers for years.
The lack of permanent ownership made those apartments unattractive and unfavorable for mortgage lending.
Kimpton Daan expects food and beverage to generate 40 percent of its annual revenue, with help from British chef James Sharman, who was once praised by the New York Times as a top talent, Lim said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last