Restaurants and hotels are gearing up to grab more of the Christmas spending pie with new menus and promotional campaigns aimed at taking advantage of rising patronage during the season. Some restaurants are offering upscale meals at a cost of more than NT$1,000 (US$32.15) per person — much more than the average meal in Taiwan — in the hope that sales rise between 10 percent and 20 percent from Christmas last year.
Wowprime Corp, a leading restaurant chain which operates more than 13 brands in Taiwan, including Wang Steak, said that it has come up with holiday promotions at several of its restaurants, including Japanese restaurant Tokiya, fusion cuisine chain Chamonix and Famonn Coffee.
Tokiya’s winter menu features special ingredients such as sesame and lily, which are traditionally used to improve health and fight off a bitter winter, and diners who download a coupon from Tokiya’s Web site by Dec. 25 are eligible for a buy three, get one free promotion.
According to Wowprime, Tokiya serves more than 3.39 million customers a year, and more than 40 percent of them come with family members, making a group deal more attractive.
Famonn Coffee, also owned by Wowprime, said it is targeting female customers with new macaroons, and deserts with cranberries and Belgium chocolate.
The Landis Taipei Hotel is offering traditional French cuisine at a premium rate, ranging from NT$1,500 to NT$4,200 per person, in a bid to dominate the upscale market. The hotel expects business to increase by between 10 and 20 percent from last year.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
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