Windsor Hotels International Co. will take over the operation of Hotel Apex Toya, a troubled high-class resort hotel in Hokkaido, it was announced June 11.
The hotel will be renovated as Windsor Hotel TOYA and will have 405 rooms in an 11-story building. The hotel on the shores of Lake Toya in southern Hokkaido is scheduled to reopen June 1, 1998. "We will pursue the ultimate epicurian style inside the hotel and the outdoors life outside the hotel. ... I believe we can make a (high-class) resort hotel of international level in Japan," Tetsuo Kuboyama, president of Windsor, said in a news conference.
Visitors can enjoy outdoor activities such as kayaking, snowmobiling, fishing and skiing. The renovated hotel will aim to attain a 60 percent occupancy rate on average within one to two years of the reopening, Kuboyama said.
Although Hotel Apex Toya opened in 1993 as a membership resort hotel, its average occupancy rate fell to 20.7 percent in 1996 due to the burst of the bubble economy and the prolonged stagnant economy. Kuboyama founded Windsor Hotels International last January and is known to be successfully managing Hotel Europe in the Huis Ten Bosch theme park in Nagasaki.