Luxury hotel the Mandarin Oriental Taipei (文華東方酒店), which has temporarily shut guestroom operations since June 1, said that it would not restart them until governments in the region lift travel bans and quarantine requirements amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The hotel said that it hopes that the global situation would return to normal early next year, but added that it might be wishful thinking in light of spiking infections in many parts of the world.
The property did not cut prices as its peers did over concern that it would compromise its hard-built brand and image, and would prove unprofitable anyway, a communications official said by telephone.
“The strategy of going cheap would not work because Mandarin Oriental Taipei spends lots of money maintaining its extravagant hardware and service quality,” the official said. “Guests motivated by low room rates would not return.”
Furthermore, the hotel has to comply with rules from its international brand, unlike domestic hospitality providers, which have greater flexibility to make changes, the official said.
Other five-star facilities in Taipei, which have been most affected by the downturn amid the pandemic, have sought to stay afloat mainly through their restaurant operations, as well as government subsidies, the official said.
The partial shutdown at Mandarin Oriental Taipei does not affect its restaurants, bars, spa, or conference and banquet facilities, the official said.
Business at restaurants and banquet facilities has almost improved to pre-pandemic levels, they said.
GROWING OWINGS: While Luxembourg and China swapped the top three spots, the US continued to be the largest exposure for Taiwan for the 41st consecutive quarter The US remained the largest debtor nation to Taiwan’s banking sector for the 41st consecutive quarter at the end of September, after local banks’ exposure to the US market rose more than 2 percent from three months earlier, the central bank said. Exposure to the US increased to US$198.896 billion, up US$4.026 billion, or 2.07 percent, from US$194.87 billion in the previous quarter, data released by the central bank showed on Friday. Of the increase, about US$1.4 billion came from banks’ investments in securitized products and interbank loans in the US, while another US$2.6 billion stemmed from trust assets, including mutual funds,
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
RESPONSE: The Japanese Ministry of Finance might have to intervene in the currency markets should the yen keep weakening toward the 160 level against the US dollar Japan’s chief currency official yesterday sent a warning on recent foreign exchange moves, after the yen weakened against the US dollar following Friday last week’s Bank of Japan (BOJ) decision. “We’re seeing one-directional, sudden moves especially after last week’s monetary policy meeting, so I’m deeply concerned,” Japanese Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Atsushi Mimura told reporters. “We’d like to take appropriate responses against excessive moves.” The central bank on Friday raised its benchmark interest rate to the highest in 30 years, but Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda chose to keep his options open rather than bolster the yen,
Even as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market. Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the US. These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini — whose inner workings are fiercely protected. In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba (阿里巴巴) to DeepSeek (深度求索), allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their
RSS