S Hotel’s occupancy has fallen to 20 to 30 percent from an average of 80 percent last year, as tourist arrivals come to a virtual standstill amid the COVID-19 outbreak, it said.
Like most of its peers, the boutique facility in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山) is attempting to stay afloat by cutting its headcount and reducing working hours, as well as offering customers takeout food services and discount rates.
Taipei labor authorities confirmed that the hotel filed to place 55 employees on unpaid leave between last month and this month to cope with a sharp decline in business.
The hotel’s Chinese celebrity owner Wang Xiaofei (汪小菲) said on his blog that he does not want to let anyone go and hopes his colleagues could help the hotel through the tough time.
The hospitality industry is bearing the brunt of the global travel restrictions imposed to hinder the spread of COVID-19.
The hotel, with 103 designed rooms, is seeking to attract domestic travelers through room rate discounts and shore up sales at its restaurant by offering takeout food at NT$280 per set.
“The strategy is expected to drive up food revenue before things can return to normal,” S Hotel director of sales Vivienne Lee (李雅惠) told the Taipei Times.
The hotel’s restaurant and bar facility fares better than its rooms, thanks to its relatively affordable menu in a neighborhood with plenty of professional workers, Lee said.
Hong Kong chef Constant Cheung (張卓智) has updated the menu to feature nouvelle cuisine at NT$680 per set at lunch and from NT$1,580 at dinner.
The hotel is also offering guests a 25 percent discount for dinner sets priced at NT$1,580 and NT$1,980, plus a 10 percent service charge.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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