Chateau de Chine Hualien owner plans to lay off 86 workers

Taipei, April 9 (CNA) The owner of Chateau de Chine in Hualien is planning to lay off 86 workers after shutting down the hotel in the wake of damage it sustained in a powerful earthquake off the Hualien coast on April 3, the Ministry of Labor (MOL) said Tuesday.

The MOL said the hotel has submitted a layoff report to the Hualien County government and expects to let go 69 workers in April and 17 in May.

LDC Hotels & Resorts, the owner of Chateau de Chine Hualien, confirmed the layoff plan in a statement Tuesday.

It said the hotel has been closed since April 3, when the magnitude 7.2 temblor occurred, and that the group has followed the Act for Worker Protection of Mass Redundancy by submitting the layoff plan to local labor authorities.

According to local media, LDC had been planning to rebuild the Chateau de Chine hotel building, which is more than 40 years old, and because of the serious damage sustained in the earthquake, the group decided to shut down the hotel immediately and start the project.

Following the earthquake and its immediate aftershocks, the building had cracking, flaking, peeling and chipping on its concrete surfaces.

LDC said it will talk with the affected employees at the hotel to see if they are willing to be transferred to other group businesses, but it pledged that those who want to leave will have their interests protected based on the Labor Standards Act.

According to LDC, Chateau De Chine in Hualien had a workforce of almost 100 employees.

In addition to Chateau De Chine in Hualien, LDC operates other hotels around Taiwan, including Palais de Chine Hotel (Taipei) and Fleur de Chine Hotel (Sun Moon Lake), Maison de Chine Hotels, and Hotel Pin and other Chateau de Chine Hotels.

The group also runs Gala de Chine, a wedding venue.

It owns another seven hotels and villas in Italy, including A.Roma Lifestyle Hotel (Rome), Palazzo Venart (Venice) and Villa Ortaglia (Florence).

The earthquake, the strongest to hit Taiwan in nearly 25 years, struck off the coast of Hualien County, with its epicenter located in the Pacific Ocean, 25.0 kilometers south-southeast of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 15.5 km.

The temblor's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, was highest in Hualien, where it measured a 6+ on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale, resulting in building collapses and landslides.

To date, it has resulted in the deaths of 13 people and injured 1,145, with six still missing.

The Hualien County Tourism Association has forecast that hotel booking rates in Hualien will fall to lower than 10 percent in April as the quake has ruined the vacation mood of many potential visitors.

Before the incident, the association anticipated that about 60 percent of hotel rooms in Hualien would be booked in April, in large part due to the four-day Tomb Sweeping Festival from April 4-7.