Two Taiwanese hotels yesterday joined forces with foreign travel agencies and beverage suppliers with the hope of boosting food and beverage revenue and attracting new customers.
Encouraged by local diners’ penchant for Japanese food, Formosa International Hotels Corp (FIH, 晶華酒店) inked a pact with Japan’s second-largest travel agency, HIS Co, to bring popular Japanese restaurants to Taipei.
The deal would enable the two firms to provide funding and know-how to Japanese restaurants looking to expand to Taiwan, Regent Taipei managing director Simon Wu (吳偉正) said at a news conference in Taipei.
The local hotel chain would provide venues for expansion, while HIS would supply professional counsel and financial assistance if necessary, Wu said.
“FIH will be both a landlord and a brand partner under the partnership, allowing it to gain customers, increase revenue and diversify income sources,” Wu said.
US boutique cake maker Lady M has set up a store at Regent Taipei after a pop-up shop there sold more than 6,000 cakes, far more than expected, Wu said, adding that the hotel entertains 3,000 diners a day on average and would be a favorable base for foreign restaurants.
FIH shares rose by the daily limit to NT$151 yesterday, one day after it announced plans to distribute a cash dividend of NT$11.075 per share based on last year’s earnings of NT$10.8 per share.
The company reported net income of NT$1.37 billion (US$44.4 million) for last year, up from NT$1.06 billion a year earlier, which benefited from the sale of a majority stake in overseas Regent properties to InterContinental Hotels Group.
In related news, Caesar Park Hotel Banciao (板橋凱撒飯店), a property belonging to Caesar Park Hotels and Resorts (凱撒飯店連鎖), yesterday said that it would be introducing Canadian beers at its Chinese restaurant Jia Yan (家宴), which features Taiwanese and Hakka dishes.
The hotel plans to pair Chinese dishes with Canadian beers in an attempt to break the tradition of pairing Western meals with wines, marketing and communications official Zara Wang (王筱瑩) said.
“The fusion would help the two-year-old hotel claim the mantel of top eatery in New Taipei City,” Wang said.
Food and beverage generated 40 percent of the hotel’s overall revenue last year, she added.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
RSS