Grand Cosmos Hotels & Resorts Group (天成飯店集團) is in talks to build more hotels in various parts of Taiwan, encouraged by the fast-growing popularity of its Grand Cosmos Resort Ruisui (瑞穗天合) in Hualien County, top executives said yesterday.
The Taiwanese hotel chain, which also operates the Cosmos Taipei (台北天成大飯店) near Taipei Railway Station and the Taipei Garden Hotel (台北花園大酒店) near the Ximen MRT Station, is considering opening a designer hotel in Hualien City and copying the Grand Cosmos Ruisui model in Taipei, group vice chairman and CEO Mike Chang (張東豪) told reporters on the sidelines of a public function.
“We prefer to build facilities from scratch rather than acquire existing ones, so the properties can better reflect our ideas in design, architecture and services,” Chang said.
Photo: CNA
The increasing popularity of its flagship property, the Grand Cosmos Resort Ruisui, gives the group confidence to undertake a more expensive and time-consuming expansion, he said.
The Grand Cosmos Resort Ruisui and the Grand Mayfull Taipei Hotel (美福飯店) yesterday won the first five-star-plus honor from the government for outperforming their five-star peers in the services they offer to the physically challenged, tech-savvy guests, senior citizens, Muslims and guests with pets.
The two-year-old resort has booked 80 to 85 percent of its 198 guestrooms and villas for the summer, marketing and communications head Blithe Chao (趙芝綺) said, as eastern Taiwan leads in tourism’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite high occupancy rates, Chang said that there is still room for improvement and asked his colleagues to help fill up empty rooms.
Grand Cosmos Resort Ruisui has not had to furlough workers or seek relief funds, but is taking on extra staff members from affiliated facilities in Taipei, the area most affected by the virus, Chang said.
Chang declined to comment on the financial performance of the resort or the group, saying that the most urgent task is to take care of all of its employees.
The company is pressing ahead with plans to rejoin the Taichung market and is mulling building another Grand Cosmos Resort in Taipei, likely through a partnership with one of the city’s urban renewal projects, Chang said.
The group is taking advantage of the slow season in Taipei to upgrade facilities at the Taipei Garden Hotel, while the older Cosmos Taipei nearby also needs to be renovated, although economic uncertainty calls for a cautious, stable approach, Chang said.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), who presented the awards, said that the Cabinet would extend wage subsidies by three to six months for hotels where foreign tourists and businesspeople normally account for 50 percent of the clientele.
The ministry would promote trips to local starred hotels in Taipei and temporarily lift a ban on civil servants staying at luxury hotels when on government business, Lin added.
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