Choosing a hotel can be such a headache. Few travelers want to settle for a roach-infested room but many are also reluctant to part with, say, NT$10,000 to NT$20,000, for a place to stay. That's the old guest mentality. The Sheraton Taipei Hotel has spent NT$2.4 billion on renovations in anticipation of the new guest mentality: A hotel is more than just a place to stay.
While the Sheraton's outer appearance hasn't changed much, the renovations begun in April 2003 have just reached completion. There is a new lobby, new restaurants and a new look for the rooms themselves, including two floors of new "executive" rooms, claimed to be the best in Taipei.
Once known as the Lai Lai Sheraton, the 26-year-old hotel is within walking distance from the Executive, Control and Legislative Yuans and has gained a reputation over the years as a favorite hangout for politicians.
PHOTOS: SUNG CHI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Owned by the super-wealthy Tsai family, the Lai Lai became a hotbed of power and intrigue. In 1985, a Tsai-family financial scandal involving the Taipei Tenth Credit Cooperative and Cathay Plastics resulted in the hotel changing hands. In 2002, Tsai brothers Chen Yiang (
Austrian hotelier Josef Dolp was general manager of the hotel in the years leading up to the renovations. While they were underway, he served as general manager at the Sheraton in Xian, China. He returned to his post at the Sheraton Taipei this June.
"The Lai Lai Hotel had an old Chinese feel to it and the design was very local," said Dolp. "We did so much renovation that we also wanted to change the market mix and the kind of custo-mers we attract."
While Dolp acknowledged that his hotel's location meant political clientele would be a mainstay, he said the new target groups are international businesspeople and Taiwanese 30-somethings. This shift is reflected in the hotel's new look and feel, which is clean and structured, simple as opposed to busy, and focuses on functionality and timelessness. These are aesthetic virtues appreciated not only by international businesspeople, but also by young people, according to Dolp.
Owner Tsai Chen-yang and his wife Ellie Lai (
"Our hotel reflects the status quo of the story of Taiwan," Dolp said, pointing to the classical Japanese influence that is most apparent on the rigidly straight, elegant wood that lines bedroom walls.
While a beautiful, comfortable interior is important, it is the process and the experience that will bring customers back and give the hotel a competitive edge, Dolp says.
The management has adopted an approach to service that centers on customer feedback instead of hotel traditions. While it is common practice for the bellboy to whisk away a guest's luggage the moment they check in, surveys revealed this to be an annoyance for many guests, especially businesspeople who want to have their work with them at all times.
The goal, Dolp says, is to make the hotel experience as efficient as possible while still maintaining a friendly, human touch. And despite the amount that was spent on upgrading the hotel's appearance, in the end it's the people and the experience that count for the most.
"It's like a one-night stand with a beautiful lady," Dolp said. "If you find out she's stupid, you won't sleep with her again. So we want to be a beautiful lady who is smart so you'll fall in love and come back over and over again."
From the last quarter of 2001, research shows that real housing prices nearly tripled (before a 2012 law to enforce housing price registration, researchers tracked a few large real estate firms to estimate housing price behavior). Incomes have not kept pace, though this has not yet led to defaults. Instead, an increasing chunk of household income goes to mortgage payments. This suggests that even if incomes grow, the mortgage squeeze will still make voters feel like their paychecks won’t stretch to cover expenses. The housing price rises in the last two decades are now driving higher rents. The rental market
July 21 to July 27 If the “Taiwan Independence Association” (TIA) incident had happened four years earlier, it probably wouldn’t have caused much of an uproar. But the arrest of four young suspected independence activists in the early hours of May 9, 1991, sparked outrage, with many denouncing it as a return to the White Terror — a time when anyone could be detained for suspected seditious activity. Not only had martial law been lifted in 1987, just days earlier on May 1, the government had abolished the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist
When life gives you trees, make paper. That was one of the first thoughts to cross my mind as I explored what’s now called Chung Hsing Cultural and Creative Park (中興文化創意園區, CHCCP) in Yilan County’s Wujie Township (五結). Northeast Taiwan boasts an abundance of forest resources. Yilan County is home to both Taipingshan National Forest Recreation Area (太平山國家森林遊樂區) — by far the largest reserve of its kind in the country — and Makauy Ecological Park (馬告生態園區, see “Towering trees and a tranquil lake” in the May 13, 2022 edition of this newspaper). So it was inevitable that industrial-scale paper making would
Hualien lawmaker Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) is the prime target of the recall campaigns. They want to bring him and everything he represents crashing down. This is an existential test for Fu and a critical symbolic test for the campaigners. It is also a crucial test for both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a personal one for party Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫). Why is Fu such a lightning rod? LOCAL LORD At the dawn of the 2020s, Fu, running as an independent candidate, beat incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and a KMT candidate to return to the legislature representing
RSS