Ambassador Hotel Ltd (國賓大飯店), one of the nation’s biggest hotel chain operators, expects consolidated sales to pick up starting next quarter, backed by the launch of the chain’s second budget hotel in Taipei.
The company, which currently operates three international tourist hotels in the nation and a budget hotel chain under the Amba (意舍) brand, announced last week that its second Amba hotel would open in April.
Ambassador Hotel has spent about one-and-half years renovating a commercial building on Taipei’s Zhongshan N Road, which used to be an office building, into a 90-room hotel designed by well-known Taiwanese architect Kuo Ying-chao (郭英釗).
To accelerate its expansion, the company might launch a third Amba hotel — near Songshan Railway Station — by the end of this year.
The move is in line with the hotel operator’s strategy to diversify to another brand that targets lower-budget travelers. In mid-2013, Ambassador Hotel chairman Emmet Hsu (許育瑞) announced that the company was targeting opening eight Amba hotels in three years.
The launch of these new hotels should serve to further increase the company’s sales momentum, with the Amba brand’s sales proportion expected to reach 30 percent of Ambassador Hotel’s total revenue in the next few years, Hsu said.
The first Amba hotel, in Taipei’s Ximending (西門町) area, began operations in 2012 and last year’s annual sales stood at NT$240 million (US$7.58 million), accounting for about 7 percent of the company’s total revenue.
The hotel’s average room occupancy rate was as high as 95 percent last year, with an average room cost of NT$2,960, outperforming its peers in the segment, company data showed.
Ambassador Hotel’s consolidated revenue reached NT$3.48 billion for the whole of last year, an increase of 8.23 percent from the previous year, a stock exchange filing showed.
Ambassador Hotel chief operating officer Frank Lin (林興國) said the two planned Amba hotels set to open this year will offer about 300 job openings.
To develop talent for the tourism industry, the Yeangder Group (仰德集團) — Ambassador Hotel’s parent company — has spent more than NT$20 million building a training hotel in a high school founded by the group, Hsinchu Country’s Yeang-Dear Senior High School.
“The training hotel should raise the level of practical training for students and build up their future competitiveness in the hotel industry,” Lin said.
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