Penghu County residents may have turned down an opportunity three years ago to be the first county to host a casino, but that window of opportunity could be reopened with the establishment of a new hotel resort in the county’s Siyu Township (西嶼).
The township, which is on the west side of Penghu’s main island, has two islands, Yuwong Island (漁翁島) and Siaomen Islet (小門嶼).
The Penghu National Scenic Area Administration confirmed yesterday it would outsource the development of Siyu’s Yuwong Island Hotel Resort under a build-operate-transfer (BOT) and renovate-operate-transfer (ROT) business model to Huafu Group, the only firm to bid.
The announcement came after the three-year restriction on proposing a casino referendum in Penghu County expired last month.
Some have speculated that the group is eyeing the possibility of resurrecting the proposal for a casino referendum following the positive outcome of a referendum on Matsu last year, and that as result a casino could be built within the grounds of the hotel resort in accordance with the current regulations.
However, the administration has denied that the group has plans to do so.
“In the presentation, the group mentioned that it would work with Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT),” said Tsai Chi-hsien (蔡淇賢), the administration’s secretary.
“The airline plans to introduce charter flight services from Penghu to Xiamen, Quanzhou and Hong Kong.
The group will work with the airline to offer package tours that cover both the flight and hotel accommodation, Tsai said.
Huafu Group is owned by Chang Kang-wei (張綱維), who also serves as the chairman of FAT.
Tsai said that the group also plans to buy boats to allow travelers to tour between Magong (馬公) and Siyu.
It did not mention anything about building a casino.
Tsai said the group plans to invest NT$650 million in the project, which would include building a four-star hotel resort with 232 rooms and renovating the Yuwongdao Tourist Center.
The contract between the group and Penghu National Scenic Area Administration gives the former the right to develop and operate the hotel resort for 50 years.
Renovations at the Yuwongdao Tourist Center are scheduled to be completed within 18 months of the contract being signed.
Aside from providing jobs and giving special offers to local residents, the group also promised a royalty of NT$1 million for the development.
Once the hotel resort becomes operational, the administration is to receive an additional royalty of about NT$181 million during the contract period.
The hotel resort is scheduled to become operational in December 2015.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater