Regal to ax 200 staff from 10 hotels

Regal Hotels International will sack at least 200 staff in its 10 hotels in Hong Kong as the hotel sector reels under the social unrest and coronavirus outbreak.

This came a month after the group owned by Lo Yuk-sui - the second son of the Great Eagle matriarch Lo To Lee-kwan - asked its employees to take four days of unpaid leave per month starting from this month to keep the business afloat.

A spokesman said the hotel has faced difficulties since the second half of last year, when anti-fugitive protests broke out.

"The novel coronavirus further knocked hotel businesses and seriously threatened the industry's operation," he said.

"The group thinks that necessary measures including manpower adjustment must be taken promptly."

But the spokesman did not reveal how many staffers from which departments would be affected.

Sources said 200 to 250 employees - mostly from room service - among 2,140 staffers will be laid off, with a small number of staffers being transferred to contractors.

Apart from 10 hotels bearing the group's brand name Regal and iclub - four on Hong Kong Island, four in Kowloon, one in Sha Tin and one at the airport - the group is expecting to open a new branch Regala Skycity Hotel in the airport and iclub Sheung Wan II Hotel this year.

The group also operates 10 hotels in seven mainland cities, including Shanghai, Jiangsu and Sichuan.

Tourism sector lawmaker Yiu Si-wing said it was no surprise for hotels to lay off staff at this gloomy time as they could not see the future, and many hotels had requested employees to take no-pay leave.

The Tourism Board earlier said only 3,000 tourists a day visited the SAR in the first two weeks of this month, a 98 percent plunge year on year.

The Hong Kong Hotel Employees Union also said at least 17 hotels asked their employees to take unpaid leave, and four hotels have been laying off employees.

Empire Hotels has already sacked nearly 100 employees.

Hotel Pennington by Rhombus in Causeway Bay, operated by a group with more than 30 years' experience, announced it will close it business on March 31. The building will change to commercial use.

About 30 employees will be affected.