Grand Hotel chairman Lee Chien-jung (李建榮) yesterday said that he is ready to hand over the reins to a new chairman after next month’s board of directors meeting, because he has achieved what he was commissioned to do at the nation’s first international hotel.
Lee’s term is not scheduled to end until June 30 next year, but he said that he had told the Ministry of Transportation and Communications that he wanted to step down early and met with Minister of Transportation and Communications Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) on Friday last week to discuss the matter.
The ministry owns the hotel.
His resignation would take place at the end of next month, when the hotel’s board of directors is to meet to pick new directors to fill vacant seats.
Lee said in a statement that he was grateful for the past five years, in which he worked with the hotel’s board and employees to boost competitiveness.
The hotel’s revenue in the first half of this year rose NT$10 million (US$316,275) from last year’s overall revenue, Lee said, adding that its clientele was split about 50-50 between group tours and individual traveleres.
He said he helped reduce the hotel’s personnel costs from 50.72 percent of total expenditures in 2011 to 44.78 percent as of last month.
Renovations of the Taipei Grand Hotel’s rooms, restaurants and kitchen were also completed on his watch, he said.
The Taipei Grand Hotel has been profitable under his leadership, while the Kaohsiung Grand Hotel has reduced its losses by a yearly average of NT$10 million over the past five years, he said.
The Taipei Grand Hotel’s image and brand was reshaped by the opening of the Yuanshan Museum inside the hotel, Lee said, adding that he hoped his successor would help the hotel pursue further development and that customers will continue to support the hotel.
The hotel is run by the Duen-Mou Foundation, a nonprofit organization established by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
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
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
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