Kuwait City (State of Kuwait), 18 January 2016 - While its existing green initiatives recently resulted in a fifth consecutive Green Globe certification for Mövenpick Hotel Kuwait, the upscale hotel is especially proud of one particular green project.
Harvested dates used in the hotel's restaurants are part of the sustainable product strategy and complement existing green actions.
As part of a sustainable product supply programme to become partially self-sufficient, the 100-room hotel in the Kuwait Free Trade Zone recently reaped the fruit of its first date harvest. It partnered with a specialist agricultural company to design strategic solutions for successfully harvesting and using the dates in its own hotel restaurants and operations.
The dates have been used in the hotel's breakfast buffet, in healthy, nutritional juices, as gifts to long-stay guests and during the Mövenpick Chocolate Hour, a signature culinary service where complimentary chocolate is featured for guests to enjoy.
"This new project is part of Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts' worldwide programme of green initiatives and it's been a thoroughly enriching experience to see our latest plan come to fruition," said Hassan Hassanein, General Manager of Mövenpick Hotel Kuwait.
"A key element of the plan is to involve our employees to imbed our commitment to the company's sustainability approach. The first date harvest was entirely done by our own hotel employees and it has been wonderful to see their enthusiasm and dedication to this cause."
At 7,000 sqm and covering 60% of the premises, the hotel's surrounding green landscape contains a variety of local flora and plants indigenous to the region. A variety of eco-friendly products and environmentally-sound methods are employed to maintain and irrigate the area, including sprinkler and dripping systems.
The 40 date palms that delivered the first harvest were planted around 12 years ago and provided a total of more than 500 kilogrammes of dates.
To efficiently manage its energy and water use, the upscale low-rise hotel already features LED lighting, dual flushing toilets and low-flow, high-pressure rain showerheads.
Mövenpick Hotel Kuwait is close to Kuwait Bay and the international airport. It features five restaurants, including a garden café close to the free-form lagoon pool with waterfalls. Other facilities include a boardroom, events venue, gymnasium and kids club.
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Showing posts with label kuwait city. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kuwait city. Show all posts
Tuesday, 16 February 2016
Saturday, 12 December 2015
PHILIPPINES: Philippine Airlines Starting Manila To Jeddah In 2016
The new service will operate 4 times each week to Dubai lnd three times weekly to Jeddah using a wide bodied Airbus A330 aircraft.
Philippine Airlines has a world famous friendly service and competitive prices to many destinations world-wide.
Monday, 23 November 2015
QATAR: How Safe Is Qatar From ISIS Attacks?
Following two high-profile attacks in France and Lebanon over the weekend, and threats from the alleged perpetrators that this was only “the first of the storm,” countries around the world are upping their security measures.
For its part, Qatar appears to have been on high alert even before the violence in Paris and Beirut, following separate bombings of two Shia mosques in Saudi Arabia and another in Kuwait City over the summer.
Nonetheless, in spite of last year’s threats on ISIS forums about bombing the 2022 World Cup, a foreign policy analyst said it’s unlikely that Qatar would be attacked by the group.
This is because the Gulf country has a “low profile” in the ongoing military campaign against ISIS, Andrew Hammond, a policy analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said
“ISIS’ list of places they’re interested in targeting is long and there’s no indication that Qatar features on the list, even at the bottom, or much reason to think that it would be.”
“I don’t think there is a risk to Qatar,” he added.
Violence
ISIS claimed responsibility for Thursday’s suicide bombing of a Beirut suburb, which killed at least 41 people, and the coordinated attacks a day later across Paris that killed more than 130 people.
There are also suspicions that the group was responsible for the bombing of a Russian airplane flying over Egypt late last month, resulting in the death of all 224 passengers and crew onboard.
Speaking recently,Will McCants, director of the Brookings Institution’s Project on US Relations with the Islamic World, and the author of The ISIS Apocalypse, said the attacks were the militant group’s way of “putting its major adversaries on notice that if they continue to impede its state building that they will pay a price.”
The recent violence has prompted some residents to question if a similar incident could happen in Qatar.
But Hammond said Qatar’s participation in aerial bombing campaigns against ISIS – ostensibly one of the reasons why militants attacked France on Friday – is unlikely to make the country a target:
“Qatar has kept a low profile in the US campaign against ISIS and does not attack the group. Westerners in Doha could be a target, however, and they form part of a Gulf development model that certainly makes them dens of sin in the jihadist view, so there is definitely reason for a country like Qatar to be on guard all the same.”
Not just ‘luck’
Civilians have not been attacked by militants in Qatar since 2005, when an Egyptian man detonated a car bomb outside the Doha Players Theater and killed British citizen Jon Adams.
The bombing is believed to be the only such incident in Qatar’s modern history.
According to one regional security expert, that’s not just good luck, but at least in part a reflection of the competence of the country’s security services.
The analyst, who asked to remain anonymous because his comments could make it difficult for him to continue working in the region, said that the country is paying more attention to who has been entering its borders over the past year:
“Qatar takes a safety first approach. If there are concerns, suspect people don’t get in. It has been more and more difficult to get a visa if you are Syrian or Lebanese” or, to a lesser extent, Jordanian or Egyptian, he said.
The US State Department offers a similar explanation for Qatar’s relative safety earlier this year, saying the historically low level of terrorism here was due in part to the country’s “restrictive” immigration policies and the monitoring capabilities of security forces.
The analyst added that Qatar’s relatively small population of nationals works in the government’s favor, as it would be difficult for a citizen to plan an ideologically-motivated attack without a friend or family member noticing and notifying the authorities.
A more worrying concern, he said, is that a GCC citizen – who can travel to other Gulf states more easily than non-Khaleejis – could enter the country to carry out an attack.
“(Qatar) can’t close the Saudi border,” he said, noting it was a Saudi national who carried out this year’s bombing in Kuwait City.
While civilians in Qatar have not been specifically threatened, several schools increased security measures last year following an alert from the US Embassy in Doha about potential attacks against teachers in the Middle East.
Keeping Qatar safe
Additionally, in the run-up to Eid Al Fitr this summer, many hotels and malls, as well as the Church complex in Qatar added new layers of security, such as putting more guards on duty, installing and using metal detectors at entrances and scrutinizing incoming vehicles.
However, Hammond said there is still room to make the country safer.
“Qatar would be an easy target in terms of implementation,” he said. “I don’t feel (security) is as tightly maintained as elsewhere.”
Little is known about Qatar’s state security apparatus, although officials often tout the country’s use of technology – a key tool given the limited number of nationals available to fill sensitive intelligence and senior law enforcement positions.
“Both external and internal security threats have become increasingly sophisticated. Accordingly, such sophistication must be met and addressed by even more sophisticated technologies and processes that are applicable to specific localities,” the Ministry of Interior’s Brig. Sheikh Nasser bin Fahad Al Thani told Qatar Today last year.
That includes blanketing the country with surveillance cameras.
Last year, the ministry increased its enforcement of a law that requires businesses around the country to install closed-circuit camera surveillance on their premises.
Additionally, the US State Department said Qatar conducts “extensive” background checks on work visa applicants and captures biometric information on everyone who enters the country – likely through the retina scan at immigration counters.
Qatar’s State Security Bureau has also been a customer of a German technology firm that sells software used to secretly monitor emails and other forms of online communication, according to documents published by WikiLeaks.
A decade ago, Qatar is also alleged to have employed a more unconventional tactic to keep the nation safe. A report in The Atlantic from 2010 claims Qatar paid al Qaeda millions of dollars so it wouldn’t bomb the Gulf state.
While there has been no credible suggestion that the Qatar government funds ISIS, the country is known to provide financial support to various rebels groups in the region.
This, the regional security expert said, may indirectly provide the country some extra protection.
“Qatar supports a vast array of these groups,” he said. “And (they believe that) you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
For its part, Qatar appears to have been on high alert even before the violence in Paris and Beirut, following separate bombings of two Shia mosques in Saudi Arabia and another in Kuwait City over the summer.
Nonetheless, in spite of last year’s threats on ISIS forums about bombing the 2022 World Cup, a foreign policy analyst said it’s unlikely that Qatar would be attacked by the group.
This is because the Gulf country has a “low profile” in the ongoing military campaign against ISIS, Andrew Hammond, a policy analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said
“ISIS’ list of places they’re interested in targeting is long and there’s no indication that Qatar features on the list, even at the bottom, or much reason to think that it would be.”
“I don’t think there is a risk to Qatar,” he added.
Violence
ISIS claimed responsibility for Thursday’s suicide bombing of a Beirut suburb, which killed at least 41 people, and the coordinated attacks a day later across Paris that killed more than 130 people.
There are also suspicions that the group was responsible for the bombing of a Russian airplane flying over Egypt late last month, resulting in the death of all 224 passengers and crew onboard.
Speaking recently,Will McCants, director of the Brookings Institution’s Project on US Relations with the Islamic World, and the author of The ISIS Apocalypse, said the attacks were the militant group’s way of “putting its major adversaries on notice that if they continue to impede its state building that they will pay a price.”
The recent violence has prompted some residents to question if a similar incident could happen in Qatar.
But Hammond said Qatar’s participation in aerial bombing campaigns against ISIS – ostensibly one of the reasons why militants attacked France on Friday – is unlikely to make the country a target:
“Qatar has kept a low profile in the US campaign against ISIS and does not attack the group. Westerners in Doha could be a target, however, and they form part of a Gulf development model that certainly makes them dens of sin in the jihadist view, so there is definitely reason for a country like Qatar to be on guard all the same.”
Not just ‘luck’
Civilians have not been attacked by militants in Qatar since 2005, when an Egyptian man detonated a car bomb outside the Doha Players Theater and killed British citizen Jon Adams.
The bombing is believed to be the only such incident in Qatar’s modern history.
According to one regional security expert, that’s not just good luck, but at least in part a reflection of the competence of the country’s security services.
The analyst, who asked to remain anonymous because his comments could make it difficult for him to continue working in the region, said that the country is paying more attention to who has been entering its borders over the past year:
“Qatar takes a safety first approach. If there are concerns, suspect people don’t get in. It has been more and more difficult to get a visa if you are Syrian or Lebanese” or, to a lesser extent, Jordanian or Egyptian, he said.
The US State Department offers a similar explanation for Qatar’s relative safety earlier this year, saying the historically low level of terrorism here was due in part to the country’s “restrictive” immigration policies and the monitoring capabilities of security forces.
The analyst added that Qatar’s relatively small population of nationals works in the government’s favor, as it would be difficult for a citizen to plan an ideologically-motivated attack without a friend or family member noticing and notifying the authorities.
A more worrying concern, he said, is that a GCC citizen – who can travel to other Gulf states more easily than non-Khaleejis – could enter the country to carry out an attack.
“(Qatar) can’t close the Saudi border,” he said, noting it was a Saudi national who carried out this year’s bombing in Kuwait City.
While civilians in Qatar have not been specifically threatened, several schools increased security measures last year following an alert from the US Embassy in Doha about potential attacks against teachers in the Middle East.
Keeping Qatar safe
Additionally, in the run-up to Eid Al Fitr this summer, many hotels and malls, as well as the Church complex in Qatar added new layers of security, such as putting more guards on duty, installing and using metal detectors at entrances and scrutinizing incoming vehicles.
However, Hammond said there is still room to make the country safer.
“Qatar would be an easy target in terms of implementation,” he said. “I don’t feel (security) is as tightly maintained as elsewhere.”
Little is known about Qatar’s state security apparatus, although officials often tout the country’s use of technology – a key tool given the limited number of nationals available to fill sensitive intelligence and senior law enforcement positions.
“Both external and internal security threats have become increasingly sophisticated. Accordingly, such sophistication must be met and addressed by even more sophisticated technologies and processes that are applicable to specific localities,” the Ministry of Interior’s Brig. Sheikh Nasser bin Fahad Al Thani told Qatar Today last year.
That includes blanketing the country with surveillance cameras.
Last year, the ministry increased its enforcement of a law that requires businesses around the country to install closed-circuit camera surveillance on their premises.
Additionally, the US State Department said Qatar conducts “extensive” background checks on work visa applicants and captures biometric information on everyone who enters the country – likely through the retina scan at immigration counters.
Qatar’s State Security Bureau has also been a customer of a German technology firm that sells software used to secretly monitor emails and other forms of online communication, according to documents published by WikiLeaks.
A decade ago, Qatar is also alleged to have employed a more unconventional tactic to keep the nation safe. A report in The Atlantic from 2010 claims Qatar paid al Qaeda millions of dollars so it wouldn’t bomb the Gulf state.
While there has been no credible suggestion that the Qatar government funds ISIS, the country is known to provide financial support to various rebels groups in the region.
This, the regional security expert said, may indirectly provide the country some extra protection.
“Qatar supports a vast array of these groups,” he said. “And (they believe that) you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
Friday, 30 October 2015
UAE: flydubai Launches Dubai Al Maktoum Operations
Offering six new routes and 63 weekly frequencies, flydubai’s new base at Dubai Al Maktoum was opened for business on 25 October.
flydubai launched its first flights from Dubai Al Maktoum (DWC) on 25 October.
Speaking about flydubai’s new operations, Ghaith Al Ghaith, CEO, said: “It is the same spirit that allowed us to develop significant potential for growth in the many markets within our geographic focus and now enables us to take advantage of the huge opportunity presented by DWC. We recognise the benefits and convenience that DWC offers, while at the same time continuing our operations at the world renowned Dubai International.
We are a young, dynamic airline and keen to increase opportunities for travel for our passengers across Dubai; DWC gives us that.”
On the same day flydubai’s inaugural flight landed in the capital city of Eritrea, Asmara (ASM). The Eritrean capital becomes the airline’s 13th destination in East Africa and the 18th destination flydubai has launched this year.
Friday, 11 September 2015
JORDAN: Air Arabia Jordan Introduces Amman To Dammam Flights
Doing the honours in Amman cutting the new route cake were: Capt. Nadhem AlHamad, Air Arabia Jordan CEO; Nabil Hajjarah, Dnata Catering, Customer Services Manager; Svitlana Scrypai, Air Arabia Jordan, Cabin Crew; Riad Al Khashman, Air Arabia Jordan, Chairman; Stella Saleh, Air Arabia Jordan, Cabin Crew; and Capt. Mohammed Al Omari, Air Arabia Jordan, Accountable Manager.
Air Arabia Jordan commenced twice-weekly services between its Amman (AMM) base and Dammam (DMM) on 2 September. The 1,460-kilometre sector becomes the LCC’s fifth route from its latest hub, and the second in Saudi Arabia, adding to its existing flights to Jeddah.
The airline also flies to Erbil, Kuwait City and Sharm El Sheikh. The A320-operated service will face direct competition from Royal Jordanian, which offers a 10 times weekly service on the city pair.
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