The Malaysian Insider :: Features

Hotel offers ‘ultimate luxury’ for your pets

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 08:43 AM PDT

The splash and play water feature at Best Friends Pet Care Walt Disney World.

MELBOURNE, June 13 – Pets are set to be able to stay in style at a new Melbourne airport hotel, which also has limousine transfers for travellers' four-legged friends.

The new Hanrob Pet Hotel is set to open July 1 at Melbourne International Airport's Tullamarine terminal, an A$4 million (RM12.86 million) project which has taken five years to complete.

The hotel, which is the second in the Hanrob chain following an opening at Sydney airport, has a limousine service to collect passengers, their luggage and their pets, dropping humans off at departures and pets at the Hanrob to begin their stay.

The hotel offers ten "ultimate luxury" dog suites complete with private courtyard, toys and television, kennels and "cat condos" for feline companions to stay in.

During the day, activities for dogs include a training programme and exercise activities, along with playtime hours with other dogs and grooming sessions.

Luxury pet hotels are becoming increasingly popular among pet owners as an alternative to the traditional kennels, with many owners admitting that they would rather take their animal with them than leave it at home.

The Best Friends Pet Care Resort, which operates 40 pet resorts across the US, last year announced the opening of a 300-pet high-profile facility at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, catering for families unable to leave their furry friends behind.

The resort, equipped to service dogs, cats, pocket pets, small mammals and birds, features a 21 sq m VIP suite, a private dog park with its own water feature and a grooming salon. – AFP

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China unveils landmark rail line

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 03:12 AM PDT

A file photo showing a security guard keeping watch near a high-speed train at the Beijing South Railway Station July 22, 2008. China will launch in June 2011, the world's longest high-speed railway, to link Beijing and Shanghai. – Reuters pic

BEIJING, June 13 – China will this month launch what it is touting as the world's longest high-speed railway built in one go to link the country's two most important cities, officials said today, shrugging off concerns over financing and high debt levels.

Costing 220.9 billion yuan (RM103.75 billion), the 1,318km Beijing-to-Shanghai line's formal start marks the beginning of a massive effort to transform its sprawling rail network.

The spending spree will amount to 2.8 trillion yuan between 2011 and 2015.

The new line will whisk passengers through the Chinese countryside at 300kph, cutting travel time between the two cities nearly in half to less than five hours.

In doing so, it will provide a model for how the government is seeking to efficiently transform passenger transport in a nation already accustomed to travelling by rail rather than by aircraft.

Railway Ministry officials told a news conference that the line, using "world-class technology standards", was only the beginning of an investment splurge that could be an example to the world.

Over the next five years "railway investment will continue the trend of rapid growth. We will not slow down the pace, and there will be no cut in investments", Vice-Minister of Railways Hu Yadong said.

The 2.8 trillion yuan earmarked is an increase of 41.4 per cent over the country's previous five-year spending plan which finished in 2010. In 2010 alone, China's railway investments amounted to 707.5 billion yuan, up 17.8 per cent from 2009.

That funding will help China meet its goal of laying 45,000 km of high-speed track across the country by 2015.

But the steep price tags for schemes like the Beijing-Shanghai link carry their own financing woes, concerns the ministry has played down.

China's Railway Ministry is already heavily in debt. Its total liabilities jumped to 1.9836 trillion yuan at the end of March 2011, representing a 58.24 per cent asset-liability ratio.

Former Railway Minister Liu Zhijun spearheaded the sector's investment drive over the last decade, but his dismissal earlier in the year on "disciplinary violations" – a charge that usually denotes corruption – called into question the ambitious expansion plans.

The ministry posted a rare pre-tax loss of 3.7 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2011, according to figures released by its finance department.

Yu Bangli, the ministry's chief economist, said that with rail seen as a vital part of national infrastructure, the ministry had sufficient support from other departments to finance its massive construction projects.

"Everyone can relax, funds for railway (construction) are guaranteed," he said.

Yu has previously told Chinese state media that he expects most high-speed lines to be profitable within four to seven years after construction.

Shorter high-speed lines already connect Beijing to Tianjin, Shanghai to Hangzhou, and a few other cities, where their opening has caused dramatic cuts in flight services, or even total cancellations.

One-way economy class tickets for the Beijing-to-Shanghai run will cost 555 yuan to start, slightly cheaper than the lowest price, discounted air ticket between the two cities.

But the ministry will be hoping to win passengers away from the airlines on a route notorious for its long delays due to airport congestion and military controls over air space. – Reuters

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Kredit: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com

Isnin, 13 Jun 2011

The Malaysian Insider :: Features

The Malaysian Insider :: Features

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