The Dubai developer Meraas yesterday launched a residential project with the Italian luxury fashion brand Bvlgari on Jumeirah Bay Island.
The Bvlgari Resort and Residences will feature 165 apartments, eight penthouses, 15 mansions and a five-star hotel. The project will be spread across 1.7 million square feet.
The Bvlgari-branded 101-room hotel along with 20 villas will be operated by Marriott’s Ritz-Carlton. The project will also feature a 50-berth marina and a Bvlgari yacht club.
The apartments will have one to four bedrooms, while the mansions will have between three and six bedrooms.
The residences, which are scheduled to be handed over in 2017 along with the entire project, will go on private sale this week.
Meraas declined to disclose prices, but these “would be at the top of the range”, said Cherif Hosny, the chief hospitality officer at Meraas.
“We are targeting the niche market, we need luxury. Dubai is a branded city,” he added.
In 2011, a Bvlgari penthouse apartment hotel property in Knightsbridge in London sold for £100 million (Dh556.1m).
The island would also include unbranded waterfront villas by Meraas, which are not yet on the market.
Increasingly the residential component is moving into the hotel segment in the UAE as the concept of city resorts takes off.
Emaar's Vida Hotels and Resorts will expand to a 180-room Vida hotel and serviced apartments in Town Square near Al Barsha.
Vida also expects to open Vida residences next to Vida Downtown, said Stefan Viard, the general manager of Al Manzill and Vida Downtown.
The mixed-use Hills project near Emirates Hills will feature 136 serviced apartments branded as Vida Residence.
The Bvlgari residences are generating interest from Gulf, European, Chinese and Indian investors, according to Silvio Ursini, executive vice president at Bvlgari. The company, known for its watches and jewellery, expects to open hotels in Shanghai and Beijing in 2017. It already has a presence in Bali, London and Milan.
Dubai has the largest number of hotel rooms in the region under construction with 14,385 rooms across 49 hotels at the end of last month, according to the consultancy STR Global. That represents 18 per cent of the total number of rooms under various stages of construction.
When the Bvlgari hotel opens it will join Emaar’s Armani Hotel in Burj Khalifa among the handful of fashion luxury brands to operate hotels in the UAE.
“Doing hotels is a very complicated business, because they are massive real estate projects, and this is why only a few brands have managed to do it,” Mr Ursini said.
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How the bonus system works
The two riders are among several riders in the UAE to receive the top payment of £10,000 under the Thank You Fund of £16 million (Dh80m), which was announced in conjunction with Deliveroo's £8 billion (Dh40bn) stock market listing earlier this year.
The £10,000 (Dh50,000) payment is made to those riders who have completed the highest number of orders in each market.
There are also riders who will receive payments of £1,000 (Dh5,000) and £500 (Dh2,500).
All riders who have worked with Deliveroo for at least one year and completed 2,000 orders will receive £200 (Dh1,000), the company said when it announced the scheme.
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Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 4/5
FIXTURES
Thu Mar 15 – West Indies v Afghanistan, UAE v Scotland
Fri Mar 16 – Ireland v Zimbabwe
Sun Mar 18 – Ireland v Scotland
Mon Mar 19 – West Indies v Zimbabwe
Tue Mar 20 – UAE v Afghanistan
Wed Mar 21 – West Indies v Scotland
Thu Mar 22 – UAE v Zimbabwe
Fri Mar 23 – Ireland v Afghanistan
The top two teams qualify for the World Cup
Classification matches
The top-placed side out of Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong or Nepal will be granted one-day international status. UAE and Scotland have already won ODI status, having qualified for the Super Six.
Thu Mar 15 – Netherlands v Hong Kong, PNG v Nepal
Sat Mar 17 – 7th-8th place playoff, 9th-10th place playoff
Jeff Buckley: From Hallelujah To The Last Goodbye
By Dave Lory with Jim Irvin
How to watch Ireland v Pakistan in UAE
When: The one-off Test starts on Friday, May 11
What time: Each day’s play is scheduled to start at 2pm UAE time.
TV: The match will be broadcast on OSN Sports Cricket HD. Subscribers to the channel can also stream the action live on OSN Play.
How Filipinos in the UAE invest
A recent survey of 10,000 Filipino expatriates in the UAE found that 82 per cent have plans to invest, primarily in property. This is significantly higher than the 2014 poll showing only two out of 10 Filipinos planned to invest.
Fifty-five percent said they plan to invest in property, according to the poll conducted by the New Perspective Media Group, organiser of the Philippine Property and Investment Exhibition. Acquiring a franchised business or starting up a small business was preferred by 25 per cent and 15 per cent said they will invest in mutual funds. The rest said they are keen to invest in insurance (3 per cent) and gold (2 per cent).
Of the 5,500 respondents who preferred property as their primary investment, 54 per cent said they plan to make the purchase within the next year. Manila was the top location, preferred by 53 per cent.
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KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
What are NFTs?
Are non-fungible tokens a currency, asset, or a licensing instrument? Arnab Das, global market strategist EMEA at Invesco, says they are mix of all of three.
You can buy, hold and use NFTs just like US dollars and Bitcoins. “They can appreciate in value and even produce cash flows.”
However, while money is fungible, NFTs are not. “One Bitcoin, dollar, euro or dirham is largely indistinguishable from the next. Nothing ties a dollar bill to a particular owner, for example. Nor does it tie you to to any goods, services or assets you bought with that currency. In contrast, NFTs confer specific ownership,” Mr Das says.
This makes NFTs closer to a piece of intellectual property such as a work of art or licence, as you can claim royalties or profit by exchanging it at a higher value later, Mr Das says. “They could provide a sustainable income stream.”
This income will depend on future demand and use, which makes NFTs difficult to value. “However, there is a credible use case for many forms of intellectual property, notably art, songs, videos,” Mr Das says.
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Native Invader
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If you go
The flights
There are various ways of getting to the southern Serengeti in Tanzania from the UAE. The exact route and airstrip depends on your overall trip itinerary and which camp you’re staying at.
Flydubai flies direct from Dubai to Kilimanjaro International Airport from Dh1,350 return, including taxes; this can be followed by a short flight from Kilimanjaro to the Serengeti with Coastal Aviation from about US$700 (Dh2,500) return, including taxes. Kenya Airways, Emirates and Etihad offer flights via Nairobi or Dar es Salaam.
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
