The Howard Plaza Hotel Taipei (台北福華飯店), the flagship property of Howard Hotel Group (福華飯店集團) is readying for the holiday season with plans to boost food and beverage sales, officials said yesterday.
Food and beverage sales generate more than half of all revenue at the hotel, which is on Renai Road Sec 3 and has seen steady business despite an increasingly crowded field, hotel spokesman Michael Hsueh (薛志民) said.
Occupancy rates have been hovering at about 70 percent for this quarter, which is better than the industry’s 61.29 percent average for the first nine months, Hsueh said.
International hotels fared slightly better with average occupancy of 62.77 percent, compared with 56.38 percent for standard hotels, Tourism Bureau data showed.
With 606 guestrooms and several restaurants, Howard Plaza Taipei is a popular social and conference venue for domestic and foreign guests due to its location near Far Eastern Sogo Department Store (遠東Sogo百貨) and MRT railway stations, Hsueh said.
Christmas and the New Year is a high sales season and Howard Plaza Taipei is seeking to improve business by launching a special Christmas menu that features Finnish salads, soups, deer meat and pumpkin pies at NT$1,200 per person (US$38.90), he said.
As in the past, the hotel plans to host a series of Christmas activities and is to have a Finnish Santa Claus to entertain guests, he said.
The five-star hotel sold NT$7.5 million in restaurant and accommodation coupons during the Taipei International Travel Fair earlier this week, 10 percent more than last year, communications official Owen Chen (陳正平) said.
The fair is a gauge to see how the industry is likely to fare in the coming year.
The group’s Kaohsiung and Kenting properties have reported a pickup in bookings due to government travel subsidies to help hotels in southern and eastern Taiwan.
The Kaohsiung outlet reported that nearly 90 percent of its rooms are booked for the New Year holiday, officials said.
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