Lucerne, Switzerland
Fabio Schwarz has taken over the role of Assistant in Marketing & Sales (MICE) at Lucerne Convention Bureau, formerly held by Belinda Baumgartner. Alongside his work, he is taking extra-occupational courses at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
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Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

Ms Nilakrisna James has taken on the position of Director Public Relation at Sutera Harbour Resort in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.

Applications for AIME 2010’s Hosted Buyer Program will open online at www.aime.com.au on Monday 24 August 2009.

AIME 2010, 18th Asia-Pacific Incentives & Meetings Expo, will be held on 2 & 3 March at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Australia. AIME is the premier event in the region attracting more than 850 exhibitors from 50 countries. In 2009, 467 buyers from 25 countries were hosted to AIME, where an estimated $US 649 million was spent on global event bookings.

Air Berlin, Germany’s second-largest airline company, placed a convertible bond amounting to EUR 125 million with institutional investors outside of the US, Canada, Australia and Japan. Part of the inflowing capital will be used to repurchase existing bonds in the amount of EUR 90 million (nominal value), the remaining EUR 70 million will be used to refinance future airplane purchases and to improve liquidity.

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The four and five-star hotel market is far from saturated. The number of luxury hotels in Germany is going to rise by 20 percent over the next years. This is the conclusion reached by Carsten Henning of CHD Expert Deutschland http://www.chd-expert.de, based on calculations of the Foodservice Industry National Database (FIND) http://www.chd-expert.com/index.php?page=find.

Announcing the findings of the latest UFI market research study, the Thailand Convention & Exhibitions Bureau, or TCEB is proud to see Thailand’s exhibition industry recognized for the fourth consecutive year as ASEAN’s top achiever. Emphasizing the success of the project “Bangkok… Exhibition City of ASEAN”, which generated revenues of 6.8 billion baht, TCEB has introduced an ambitious integrated market strategy for 2010, focusing on the short-haul market. Preparing to penetrate new markets in the Asian region, TCEB is confident of reaching its 2009 target of 200 events and revenues of 7.5 billion baht.

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In Germany, alone, several million euros of losses are incurred annually due to hotel guests plundering the hotel’s inventory on the day of their departure. The German Federal Association of Hotels and Restaurants (Dehoga-Bundesverband, Berlin), for instance, complains of guests brazenly swiping bath robes, towels, flowers, pictures and even hotel silverware. They criticize that many of the guests lack a sense of injustice when bagging hotel property.