EMIRATES BUSINESS Preferred Hotels & Resorts, the world’s largest global provider of sales, marketing and distribution services to independent luxury hotels, has announced that room nights from outbound business originating from the Middle East region increased by 21% in 2015, when compared with 2014. According to Preferred Hotels & Resorts boking data, the UK, France, Turkey, USA and Spain were ...

Bloomberg Beijing Homelink Real Estate Brokerage Co. is raising about $1 billion to expand its reach across China, according to people familiar with the matter. The company, which focuses on rental and second-hand real estate transactions, has attracted funding from Chinese Internet giants including Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Baidu Inc., said the people, who requested not to be named because ...

Bloomberg Home buyers in hot housing markets from San Francisco to Brooklyn have grown accustomed to bidding wars, waived home inspections, and rapid-fire offers. If you’re house-hunting in Omaha, Neb., Grand Rapids, Mich., or Indianapolis, you might want to brace yourself for similar tactics. Those cities and several others saw sharp declines in the number of homes for sale over ...

RITIKA SHARMA / EMIRATES BUSINESS Dip in oil prices may have affected most of the global industries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, in one or the other way, but it has made little difference to the UAE’s luxury shopping sector. However the slowdown has rephrased the way customers spend. In a recently-held GCC-centric survey, it has been found that, ...

Abu Dhabi / Emirates Business Etihad Airways has won the coveted 2016 Crystal Cabin Award in the new ‘Cabin Concepts’ category for its Boeing 787 First Class cabin, featuring the airline’s new First Suites, unique to its Dreamliner fleet. The ceremony was held last night in Hamburg, Germany, as part of the annual Aircraft Interiors Expo. The award is the ...

SUNINA RANA / WAM The midsize SUV Ford Explorer has been named the best in the segment at the region’s most prestigious car award function in Abu Dhabi. Thierry Sabbagh, managing director of Ford Middle East, said, “We are enthralled for achieving this milestone. Explorer has already set a benchmark for the segment of Sport Utility Vehicles. We have always ...

Dubai / Emirates Business Emirates NBD, a leading bank in the region, has been named Best Local Private Bank in the Middle East at the 2016 Private Banker International (PBI) Middle East Awards. The bank was presented with the award at a gala dinner that was held in conjunction with the Private Banking Middle East Conference at the Ritz Carlton ...

Dubai / Emirates Business As a proactive step to enhance the contributions of the business sector to overall development, the Dubai Airport Freezone Authority (DAFZA) recently developed a new and unique model of corporate governance based primarily on spreading the concept of ‘Corporate National Responsibility’ (CNR), a more comprehensive version of the ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) paradigm. The new model ...

Bloomberg While two years of crashing prices for oil, natural gas, and coal triggered dramatic downsizing in those industries, renewables have been thriving. Clean energy investment broke new records in 2015 and is now seeing twice as much global funding as fossil fuels. One reason is that renewable energy is becoming ever cheaper to produce. Recent solar and wind auctions ...

BEIJING / AP China has banned most imports of North Korean coal and iron ore, the country’s main exports, in a significant increase in pressure on the North under UN sanctions against its nuclear and missile tests. China buys an estimated two-thirds of impoverished North Korea’s exports, making Beijing’s cooperation essential for trade penalties approved by the UN Security Council ...