All this miserable rain has got me thinking about holidays again. Wouldn’t it be great to swim in crystal blue waters, relax on a beautiful sandy beach in the warm sunshine? I’ve thought a few times about the Istrian coast famed for its beauty – as pretty as the French Riviera at a quarter of the price.
So I started to surf the net and see what I could find – I found a company called Cubus Lux. I looked into it further and liked what I saw.
The group is a Croatian leisure and tourism company and it recently signed a marketing agreement with ActivityBreaks.
In conjunction with Cubus Lux, ActivityBreaks is now offering 2-4 night holiday packages in South Istria. The price includes four-star hotel accommodation and entry to Cubus Lux's local casinos. Once the customer has booked they are redirected to a flight search engine which features Ryanair, one of ActivityBreaks’ affiliates.
To give added impetus to the deal, Ryanair have, for the first time, started to provide regular daily flights to Pula airport - from both London and Dublin. While London flights started with great booking success with an anticipated 40,000 passengers per year, Dublin flights are estimated to start at the beginning of February.
Cubus Lux's Chairman Gerhard Huber said: The company recognises the huge potential of the Istrian Peninsula, and believes the added attraction of entry to our luxurious casinos will make the breaks especially attractive to UK and Irish tourists.”
Especially for those who cannot wait for Manchester's Super Casino, I assume. He continued:
”Ryanair's move into the area reflects the rapidly increasing popularity of
Croatia as a holiday destination. More and more tourists are being attracted by
its vastly improved infrastructure, and as a group we are well positioned to
capitalise on this influx.”
And better still it is listed on Aim, so if you didn’t fancy a holiday out there – some further investigation might be warranted to see if it makes an interesting investment opportunity.
Sticking with my overseas theme, I have also spotted a company called Prince Catering and Management.
The Aim-quoted group opened another luxury restaurant as a further step in its continuing programme to expand the Prince brand across mainland China.
The new Yulin Prince Hotpot Restaurant at Yulin in Shaanxi Province brings to 15
the number of outlets now managed by Prince. Chinese spending on dining out is expected to have reached $68 billion during 2006.
Prince now manages restaurants in 14 cities across the country from Hong Kong in
the south to Xi'an, also in the northern province of Shaanxi.
In line with Prince's strategy, the 550-seater Yulin Prince Hotpot aims to cater for business professionals and groups from the middle and upper classes. Specialising in high-quality seafood hot pot as well as Prince's traditional Cantonese cuisine, it includes 39 luxury private dining rooms and covers 2,500 square metres.
Prince which admitted to trading on Aim in August 2006, also operates a hotel and health club in Xi'an, and has signed a management contract to operate a second hotel in Beijing.
I have also recently been reading about a company called Surface Transforms, which is working on some interesting stuff and is showing signs of recovery. It has been developing carbon fibre ceramic-coated stainless steel brakes for luxury cars and aeroplanes. These are lighter than ordinary disc brakes, but are more expensive and take time to 'warm up'. However ST has now signed up its first customers, and seems to be making progress especially in the auto sector.
Until next time,
Melissa Carroll
for The Penny Sleuth
