Tag: ted

  • Food, beverage businesses remain open through Tet

    Food, beverage businesses remain open through Tet

    Food and beverage establishments are working through Tet or abbreviating their holidays to make up for a year of poor business due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Crab restaurant chain Vua Cua is delivering through the holidays, and some of its outlets closed for two days out of the nine.

    “I believe that many people will stay in HCMC during the holiday as they refrain from traveling,” CEO Doan Thi Anh said, adding that last year sales during the holidays were up 300 percent from normal days.

    Tet, the Lunar New Year, is by far Vietnam’s most important festival, and most restaurants and other business establishments close for at least a week.

    But this year many are either not closing or are opening early to cash in on an opportunity to earn some money after a desperate year.

    Japanese chain Mirico reopened three of its six outlets in HCMC on Wednesday.

    “We hope the number of customers during Tet this year (starting January 29) will reach the same as last year so that we can make up for months of closure,” manager Luu Hoang Huy said.

    Two restaurants in the Quan Bui chain in Thu Duc City are also open for seven days of the nine-day holidays.

    “I think many foreigners won’t return to their country this year and we anticipate a lot of customers during the holidays,” a media representative of the chain said.

    For the first time since its establishment in 2018 Lagom Café in District 3 will remain open during most of the Tet holidays.

    The decision was based her workers’ request, owner Do Thi Ly Na explained. They preferred to work saying the months off due to social distancing in the city were enough for them, she added.

    In December revenues from food and accommodation rose by nearly 58 percent from November.

    “Most well-known downtown restaurants have been operating at full capacity and even had to turn away some customers,” Le Nguyen Minh Man, owner of Hong Kong Town restaurant in District 1, said.

    Business seems set to be “vibrant” in the first quarter, he said.

    However, his restaurant would close through the holiday since his workers had been stuck in HCMC for a year and wanted to return home, he said.

    Buying materials is challenging since suppliers are closed, and restaurants need to prepare ahead, he said.

    Paying workers triple or even five times their normal salary is key to ensuring good service during Tet, he added.

  • Huawei, Intel chiefs talk the future of ICT

    Huawei, Intel chiefs talk the future of ICT

    In today’s digitally intelligent world, the age of enterprises shoring up their singular competitive advantages is over. With industries converging and consumer requirements constantly evolving, today’s businesses need to be more open, flexible, and build on their “ecological advantages” as well.

    This was the key message delivered by Huawei CEO Guo Ping during his keynote speech at Huawei Connect 2016.

    “Today we are in the cloud era, and while we do not yet know what things will be like in the future, one thing is sure—every modern industry system will become interconnected and complicated,” Guo said.

    “As data, IoT, mobility and cloud entities develop, businesses that are not even connected with one another will have more interactions. Hence, advantages will not only come from within the organization as has traditionally been the case, but also by the effective use of its external resources.”

    Guo predicted that in the many complicated scenarios that industries such as transportation, healthcare, and education will face, companies in these sectors will eventually develop and evolve toward an open ecosystem.

    The same can be said for the ICT industry, whereby in the cloud era the sector has already transformed from a single vertical industry and into an enabler of digital transformation. A report from the World Economic Forum revealed that in 10 years, the opportunities brought upon by the digital transformation of industries will reach $100 trillion, with the world seeing the rise of even more new applications.

    “Vertical integration of the value chain is a thing of the past,” stated Guo. As the ICT industry cultivates a new ecosystem, the Huawei CEO believes it will have three key features—open, dynamic, and symbiotic—wherein enterprises, big or small, “can take part in this interdependent, symbiotic, and regenerative community of common interests, as long as it has its own unique value and makes its own unique contribution.”

    As for Huawei’s role in this cloud-driven ecosystem, Guo stressed his company’s primary principle is to prioritize “creating a bigger pie (market) over fighting for a larger piece of a shaky pie.”

    “It’s the path we must take to build our future ecological advantages,” stated the CEO. “Our responsibility as an industry leader is to leverage our core competency, and use insights gleaned from our customers as basis of development to increase the size of the market. We don’t emphasize on whether the resources will be owned by us, but instead we emphasize on would be what can we leverage and effectively connect with external resources to bring the future together.”