The Landis Taipei (台北亞都麗緻飯店) is negotiating with its employees about a plan to introduce unpaid leave as its business suffers amid the COVID-19 pandemic, hotel management said in a statement yesterday.
The statement was the hotel’s response to a Chinese-language media report the previous day that said the Landis Hospitality Group (麗緻餐旅集團) on April 1 would introduce a three-month plan under which employees would take six days of unpaid leave per month.
It is the latest move by the group to offset declining guest numbers following the closure of the Landis Taichung (台中亞都麗緻飯店) on Monday last week, the report said.
Landis Taipei said in the statement that it is still discussing the plan with its employees and would reveal the details once an agreement is reached.
“It is necessary to have staff consent” before cutting working hours, the statement said, expressing the hope that employees would understand the difficult situation the company is in.
The provisional furlough policy would be rescinded if business recovers quicker than expected, the statement said.
With the closure of the Landis Taichung, the Landis Group has five local hotels and resorts: the Landis Taipei, the Tayih Landis Hotel Tainan (台南大億麗緻酒店), Pause Landis Resorts (璞石麗緻溫泉會館) in New Taipei City’s Wulai District (烏來), the Landis Resort Yangmingshan (陽明山中國麗緻大飯店) in Taipei and the Landis Inn Chuhu (竹湖暐順麗緻文旅) in Hsinchu City.
Landis Group business development division assistant general manager Gary Lo (羅明威) attributed the closure of Landis Taichung after 13 years to the economic slowdown, surging rental fees and operational costs, as well as the impact of the pandemic.
“We never made enough to cover our losses,” Lo said.
Landis Taipei shares fell 1.45 percent to close at NT$21.50 on Friday last week. There were no trades yesterday.
WALKING AWAY: At one point the world’s No. 3 smartphone brand, LG has fallen from a position as a market leader after a series of software and hardware mishaps South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc is to wind down its loss-making mobile division after failing to find a buyer, a move that would make it the first major smartphone brand to completely withdraw from the market. Its decision to pull out will leave its 10 percent share in North America, where it is the No. 3 brand, to be gobbled up by Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc with its domestic rival expected to have the edge. “In the United States, LG has targeted mid-priced — if not ultra-low — models and that means Samsung, which has more mid-priced product lines than
SHORTAGE: The city government said it would install water purification machines to provide drinking water to residents and would close all public swimming pools Officials, residents and businesses in Taichung have been gearing up for water cuts that are to take effect tomorrow as Taiwan deals with a water shortage. The water supply to large parts of Taichung as well as parts of Miaoli, Changhua and Hsinchu counties is to be cut on a rotational basis for two days a week, affecting an estimated 1 million customers, the Water Resources Agency said. It is the most stringent water rationing measure introduced in central Taiwan in nearly 50 years, Taiwan Water Corp (台灣自來水) official Lin Yi-hsiung (林義雄) said. The Taichung City Government said in a statement that
SPECULATION: The integrated house and land transaction income tax has been amended as the real-estate market heats up because of high liquidity and low interest rates Lawmakers across party lines yesterday agreed to July 1 as the provisional date on which a draft amendment to the Income Tax Act (所得稅法) is to come into effect, with the aim of curbing real-estate speculation. The consensus was reached following interparty negotiations at the legislature’s Finance Committee to determine when revisions to the “integrated house and land transaction income tax” would take effect. The committee on Monday last week passed a number of revisions to the act, but failed to agree on when they would take effect. Under the proposed revisions, the tax would be set at 45 percent
TAICHUNG PLANT: An official said that generator No. 3 had been retrofitted and it generates 0.46g of particulate pollution per kilowatt-hour, down from 0.6g to 0.7g A spike in demand for electricity made it necessary to restart the third coal-fired generator at the Taichung Power Plant, Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) said yesterday as a feud with the Taichung City Government lingers. Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) has sought to keep the generator from being used. In 2019, he revoked Taipower’s license to operate the generator. However, the state-run utility has taken the city government to court over the license revocation and won the case in February last year, Taipower manager Chang Ting-shu (張廷抒) said. “We would like to remind the Taichung City Government that operation of the third
RSS