Imperial Hotel Taipei (台北華國大飯店) is to shut down at the end of October, succumbing to a business decline induced by social distancing restrictions and border controls to curb a COVID-19 outbreak.
The five-star hotel with 326 guest rooms in the city’s Zhongshan District (中山) yesterday confirmed that it is to terminate its leasing contract with Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台灣人壽) as the outbreak wreaked havoc on its operations.
“We do not see a light at the end of the tunnel,” although the government has conditionally lifted the ban on dine-in services this month, while keeping a tight grip on gatherings and border controls, the hotel’s marketing head, Wu Yun-chia (伍允嘉), told reporters.
Screen grab from the Imperial Hotel Taipei Web site
The 50-year-old hotel and Taiwan Life Insurance decided to part ways after a court mediation last year failed to iron out their differences over rent concession terms.
Imperial Hotel tried to cope with the outbreak by turning the hotel into quarantine facility, but it has failed to curb losses.
A nationwide level 3 COVID-19 alert imposed on May 19 stifled domestic tourism, as well as food and beverage sales.
Although the Central Epidemic Command Center lowered the alert level to 2 late last month, people are still wary of dining out amid fears of lingering local infections.
Wu said Imperial Hotel is looking for a new location to keep its Chinese restaurant, famed for its roast duck cuisine, alive.
It will also press ahead with plans to open a new Imperial Hotel in a mixed-use complex integrated with the MRT Shihlin Station in July 2023, Wu said.
“Business might not improve in the next two years, so the hotel has opted out during the hiatus,” she said.
The backdrop allows the hotel to retain some employees and related details would be released by the end of this month, Wu said.
Formosa International Hotels Corp (FIH, 晶華國際酒店集團) chairman Steven Pan (潘思亮) said he was not surprised by Imperial Hotel’s exit, comparing the hospitality sector to a “critically ailing, but forgotten” patient.
The government has declined to provide wage subsidies as it did last year for hotels dependent on foreign tourists, even though the negative impact of the outbreak is much more serious this time, Pan said on the sidelines of the company’s shareholders’ meeting.
A proposed quintuple stimulus voucher program would be of little help to Taipei-based hotels, as people in the Greater Taipei area — who form the bulk of domestic tourists — prefer to travel to eastern and southern Taiwan, Pan said.
FIH shareholders approved the distribution of a cash dividend of NT$4.39 per share from the conglomerate’s profit last year of NT$733 million (US$26.17 million), or earnings per share of NT$5.18.
The results represented a 47.08 percent decline from a year earlier, dragged by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Pan was re-elected chairman at the board elections.
TECH TITAN: Pandemic-era demand for semiconductors turbocharged the nation’s GDP per capita to surpass South Korea’s, but it still remains half that of Singapore Taiwan is set to surpass South Korea this year in terms of wealth for the first time in more than two decades, marking a shift in Asia’s economic ranks made possible by the ascent of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電). According to the latest forecasts released on Thursday by the central bank, Taiwan’s GDP is expected to expand 4.55 percent this year, a further upward revision from the 4.45 percent estimate made by the statistics bureau last month. The growth trajectory puts Taiwan on track to exceed South Korea’s GDP per capita — a key measure of living standards — a
Samsung Electronics Co shares jumped 4.47 percent yesterday after reports it has won approval from Nvidia Corp for the use of advanced high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which marks a breakthrough for the South Korean technology leader. The stock closed at 83,500 won in Seoul, the highest since July 31 last year. Yesterday’s gain comes after local media, including the Korea Economic Daily, reported that Samsung’s 12-layer HBM3E product recently passed Nvidia’s qualification tests. That clears the components for use in the artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators essential to the training of AI models from ChatGPT to DeepSeek (深度求索), and finally allows Samsung
READY TO HELP: Should TSMC require assistance, the government would fully cooperate in helping to speed up the establishment of the Chiayi plant, an official said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its investment plans in Taiwan are “unchanged” amid speculation that the chipmaker might have suspended construction work on its second chip packaging plant in Chiayi County and plans to move equipment arranged for the plant to the US. The Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported earlier yesterday that TSMC had halted the construction of the chip packaging plant, which was scheduled to be completed next year and begin mass production in 2028. TSMC did not directly address whether construction of the plant had halted, but said its investment plans in Taiwan remain “unchanged.” The chipmaker started
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS