Competition in the Xinyi District (信義) hotel industry in Taipei is set to heat up as Formosa International Hotels Corp (晶華國際酒店), Taiwan’s biggest listed hotel operator, has plans to set up a hotel in 2013 to target clientele who wish to stay in the area without burning a hole in their pocket.
“We have filed an application with the Bureau of Tourism to set up a hotel, but the project is yet to be approved by the board and we can’t comment further on it,” Ellen Chang (張筠), the company’s public relations director, said by telephone yesterday.
She said the project was still in the negotiation stage with the firm’s partners and was not a 100 percent done deal.
The Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday that Formosa International Hotels would partner with Fubon Group (富邦集團) to launch its third Silks Place (晶英酒店) Hotel in Taipei’s Xinyi District.
The hotel would be located on a plot of land Fubon bought in 2008 with the intention of building a shopping, office and hotel complex, the paper said. Total investment for the Silks Place in Xinyi would be NT$2.78 billion (US$84.2 million) and it is set to welcome guests into its almost 300 rooms in 2013, it said.
If the hotel becomes a reality, Grand Hyatt Taipei (君悅飯店), currently the lone hotel in Xinyi District, would face fierce competition, the report said.
Uni-President Group’s (統一集團) W-Hotel and Le Meridian Taipei (台北寒舍艾美酒店), owned by Shin Kong Group (新光集團), are also scheduled to open in Xinyi by the end of the year. Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) also has plans to bring its renowned Four Seasons Hotel brand to the neighborhood, the daily said.
Formosa International Hotels, which operates the Grand Formosa Regent Taipei (晶華酒店), has two other hotel brands — Silks Place and Just Sleep (捷絲旅). Silks Place has two outlets — one in Yilan and one in Tainan — while there are two Just Sleep oulets in Taipei, in Ximending and on Linshen N Road.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS