The Grand Hotel (圓山大飯店) is scheduled to hold a board meeting today to confirm the appointment of Chang Shuo-lao (張學勞) as the hotel’s new chairman.
The hotel is managed by the Duen Mou Foundation (台灣省敦睦聯誼會), a juridical association under the administration of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
Chang, formerly the Tourism Bureau director-general before his retirement from the ministry, is the chairman of the Taiwan Visitors Association (台灣觀光協會).
Chang said he agreed to take the position at Grand Hotel without any salary to avoid receiving two salary payments — as a retired civil servant and the hotel’s chairman.
He will replace Christine Tsung (宗才怡), who has been in charge of the hotel since 2002.
Chang told the Taipei Times yesterday that his first priority would be to fix the hotel’s financial problems.
“The most important thing is to halt the financial losses,” he said. “Just like when a patient is sick, the most urgent task is for him to be cured.”
Chang said he had been reluctant to take the position in the first place because fixing such problems “takes a lot out of you.”
Asked how he plans to turn the Grand Hotel from a semi-official organization into a private corporation, Chang said he wanted to start from the beginning.
Sources within the ministry said the appointment was not surprising given Chang’s key role in the preparatory work for facilitating cross-strait weekend charter flights and allowing Chinese tourists into Taiwan before the election of Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as president.
Established in 1952, the Grand Hotel was once rated by Fortune magazine as one of the top 10 hotels in the world.
Its traditional Chinese architectural design has made the hotel one of the most prominent landmarks in Taipei and the choice of accommodation for many overseas tourists.
Aside from the one in Yuanshan (圓山), Taipei, another Grand Hotel was established in Kaohsiung in 1957.
However, a fire in 1995 took a devastating toll on the main hotel in Yuanshan, destroying its roof and upper floors.
The hotel did not reopen to the public until 1998.
The fire was not the only reason the hotel’s glory as Taiwan’s first international hotel faded. Competition from other domestic and international hotel chains caused the Grand Hotel to lose many customers.
While the foundation retained successful corporate executives such as Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) and Stanley Yen (嚴長壽) to manage the hotel, their efforts failed to turn the tide.
Ministry statistics showed that as of August last year, the hotel had accumulated approximately NT$1.3 billion (US$42.7 million). in debts. Only the Grand Hotel in Taipei is profitable.
The Grand Hotel was once again in the spotlight in February as media reports said the foundation was planning to use NT$900 million to spin off and privatize the hotel before May 20.
The ministry rejected the rumors.
Issues with the Grand Hotel’s employees are another factor that has blocked its privatization.
Lee Huan-yang (李煥洋), the Grand Hotel Workers’ Union spokesperson, said they had lost faith in the management assigned by the ministry over the years, as they were never willing to sit down and talk to the workers.
“They never tell us what they are going to do with us — both for those who want to stay and for those they want to leave,” he told the Taipei Times.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
TRANSPORT DISRUPTION: More than 100 ferry services were suspended due to rough seas and strong winds, and eight domestic flights were canceled, the ministry said Tropical Storm Wipha intensified slightly yesterday as it passed closest to Taiwan, dumping more than 200mm of rain in Hualien and Taitung counties, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 11am, Wipha was about 210km southwest of Cape Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and was moving west-northwest at 27km per hour (kph). The storm carried maximum sustained winds of 101kph and gusts reaching 126kph, with a 150km radius of strong winds, CWA data showed. Wipha’s outer rainbands began sweeping across Taiwan early yesterday, delivering steady rainfall in the east and scattered showers in other regions, forecasters said. More heavy rain was expected, especially in the eastern
RSS