The owners of Taipei’s major hotels are calling on the city government to help them survive a slump in business due to COVID-19 travel bans by lowering property and land taxes.
The owners of the Mandarin Oriental Taipei (文華東方酒店), Hotel Royal Taipei (老爺酒店), Sherwood Taipei (西華飯店), Howard Plaza Hotel Taipei (福華飯店), Taipei Marriott Hotel (萬豪酒店), Grand Mayfull Hotel (美福飯店), Sunworld Dynasty Hotel Taipei (王朝大酒店) and Hotel Indigo Taipei North (英迪格) are urging the Taipei City Government to cut property and land taxes as it did during the SARS outbreak in 2003.
The city government has halved the rents and royalties of hotels with superficies contracts to ease their financial burdens amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has failed to lend a helping hand to hotels that own the property, Sherwood Hotel chairman B.V. Riu (劉文治) said.
Hotels in the capital are bearing the brunt of a lack of foreign tourists and businesspeople, although facilities elsewhere have reported a V-shaped recovery after the pandemic was brought under control in May, Riu said.
Riu urged the city government to also provide help to the owners of hotels so that they could withstand the slump.
“I hope the city government can cut land and property taxes for hotel owners by a similar amount or proportion as it has done for facilities with superficies contracts,” he said.
The Sherwood Taipei had only three bookings for guest rooms at the height of the pandemic, Riu said.
Occupancy rates have improved noticeably this month and next month, partly due to the government’s Triple Stimulus Vouchers, but they could soften again at the end of the summer, he said.
If the government’s border controls remain in place, hotels in Taipei could be forced to exit the market to curb their losses, he added.
Riu said that he was grateful for the government’s assorted rescue programs, such as wage subsidies, but hotels cannot live off rescue funds for good.
“They will all have to look at the economic fundamentals to see what is best for them in the long term,” he said.
September could be a critical time when owners with a poor business outlook call it quits, he added.
In related news, some international hotel brands are standing by their plans to join the local market.
Mitsui Garden Hotel (和苑三井花園飯店) on Zhongxiao E Road, the first Taiwanese venture by Japan’s Mitsui Fudosan Co (三井不動產), is to undergo a soft opening next month and has started to take reservations.
US hotel operator Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc plans to launch its third property under the Tapestry brand by the end of this year.
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