A new, vibrant and luxurious address, with its Spanish-inspired zest and contemporary verve, is making a sensational debut in Riyadh. And it goes by the name of Vivienda Hotel Villas.

The Information and Communication Technology Exhibition and Conference (Saudi ICT 2011) will bring together the principal companies and specialists in the industry, from across the Gulf and globe, to showcase their latest products and generate new business. The event will be held 11-15/12 at Jeddah Centre for Forums and Events (JCFE)

Profile for exhibit includes hardware, data warehousing, e-business, government, marketing and learning solutions, enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, banking, finance and accounting solutions, human resource management, internet and e-commerce security, semiconductors and embedded devices, knowledge and information management solutions, telecom carriers, fixed, wireless and mobile operators, broadband operators, media content providers, wireless ISP’s, satellite operators, equipment manufacturers, network equipment providers, cable and fiber optics, testing and measurement solutions, software companies, and consultants.Exhibitors will meet with over 3,000 senior corporate decision makers, industry experts and the highest authorities in the Kingdom’s and the Gulf’s ICT industries. The Saudi ICT conference is dedicated to the major ICT issues shaping the Gulf’s booming economy and offers the ideal setting to cement fruitful and lasting business relationships.

London-based fashion retailer LK Bennett will open 12-15 stores in the Middle East over the next three to five years as it looks to expand outside of its home market, its CEO said.

The upmarket shoe and bag brand, made famous in recent months for being a wardrobe staple of the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, hopes to capitalise on its increasing brand popularity among Gulf nationals, said Robert Bensoussan.

“In this region we could have something like, if you take in total from Lebanon to Kuwait, I would say 12-15 stores over three to five years,” he said. “We are in talks with partners.”

“We have three clusters of foreign clients in London, which we are very important; one is European clients, another is a big cluster of American clients, and we have a huge Middle Eastern clientele in our stores buying mostly shoes and bags. So it felt like a natural step to expand in the Middle East.”

Bensoussan’s private equity firm Sirius Equity acquired a majority share in the footwear and women’s wear retailer in 2008 in a deal said to be worth £80m ($124.6m). Sirius Equity has since revamped it, adding in new collections, as it looks to grow into international markets.

LK Bennett currently has 150 stores but expects to grow “very fast”, said Bensoussan. The firm opened its first UAE stores at Dubai’s Mirdif City Centre with franchise partner Jashanmal Group this week and plans to open at least four more outlets with Jashanmal.

“With Jashanmal we have the idea of opening two or three more stores in Dubai, we have a plan for Abu Dhabi and we are also looking at Kuwait,” he said. “With another partner we are looking at Qatar, maybe Egypt and we are discussing with a bunch of potential partners for Saudi Arabia and Lebanon,’ he said.

Dubai, which has spent billions of dollars establishing itself as a prime shopping destination, is home to some of the world’s largest and most iconic shopping malls.

Boosted by a high disposable income among locals and a strong tourism industry, the emirate’s retail sector has continued to grow.

According to a study by accountancy firm Deloitte, retail sales in 2010 jumped 13.2 percent in the MENA region, making it the only area in the world to post double-digit growth.

Saudi Arabia’s suggestion last month that it will try to limit how much money expatriate workers send home showed concern about the cost of having foreigners make up nearly a third of the population.

An estimated nine million foreign workers and their dependents remitted SR26.8bn ($7.1bn) out of the country in the second quarter of this year, central bank data shows. That amount was equivalent to 17 percent of Saudi Arabia’s current account surplus at a time of historically high oil revenues.

With the stability of the global financial system threatened by the euro zone debt crisis, and Saudi Arabia keen to use more of its monetary resources domestically under a $130bn government spending plan announced this year, the outflow of funds may be starting to look uncomfortably large.

Saudi Arabia, which wants to develop its economy to reduce its reliance on oil revenue, also appears to be waking up to the opportunity cost of having so much economic output produced by foreigners, most of whose money is not spent or invested within the kingdom.

“The balance of payment considerations are obviously a risk, and they are a structural risk in that if oil prices come down, they would become a challenge,” said Jarmo Kotilaine, chief economist of National Commercial Bank in Jeddah.

“But the Saudi economy has gone through a number of rough patches over the decades without compromising the basic stability of the monetary situation.”

He added, “It’s not an unmanageable problem, but the issue is the opportunity cost of the remittances. Many residents live here for the pure purpose of making as much money as they can and sending as much of it back home to their families as they can. That money isn’t being used to stimulate domestic economic activity.”

Expatriates account for nine out of 10 private-sector jobs in Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter. They fill roles that range from domestic service and factory work to management positions in large finance companies.

The value of their remittances has almost doubled in the past five years from an officially recorded SR15.3bn in the second quarter of 2006. Three economists said the true figures for money outflows were probably much higher because they did not include informal transfers.

“In practice, when oil prices are high remittances go up, and when oil prices fall, remittances go down automatically because employment falls and new recruitment falls,” said Khan Zahid, chief economist of Riyad Capital.

Labour Minister Adel al-Fakieh said in an Oct 22 television interview that the Labour Ministry was “preparing a monitoring programme aimed at reducing the huge quantity of transfers of foreign workers”.

He did not elaborate, and economists said it would be difficult to develop practical measures to limit remittances, partly because money can be taken out of the kingdom in many different ways.

Most of the money is thought to be remitted by lower-paid workers, most from South and Southeast Asia, who frequently carry cash with them on trips home rather than making formal bank transfers….Next

Residential rents in Jeddah have increased by an average of 14 percent so far this year, real estate consultants Jones Lang LaSalle said on Sunday.

Its Jeddah Real Estate Market Overview for Q3 2011 said the city’s residential sector had seen an “robust upward trend” between July and September.

Soraka Al-Khatib, co-head of Jones Lang LaSalle Saudi Arabia said: “The Jeddah market has seen a continued increase in land sales during 2011 as trading volumes and sale prices have picked up further during the last quarter.

“There is strong interest from developers to deliver additional residential supply to meet the city’s growing requirements.

King Abdullah’s announcement of additional funding for the affordable housing sector has had a positive impact on the Jeddah residential market, the report added.

Following this announcement, government related entities such as JDRUC and PPA are now planning to deliver more than 30,000 additional residential units across Jeddah over the next few years.

The report said there was also strong continued interest in the luxury segment of Jeddah’s residential market.

Al-Khatib added: “The strength of the Jeddah residential market is confirmed by the fact that most of the 16,000 units coming to the market over the remainder of 2011 have already been sold.”

The limited future supply pipeline and the city’s growing population is expected to drive prices and sustain demand throughout the remainder of 2011 and into 2012, he said.

Saudi Arabia has a fast growing population of 27 million people, most of whom are under the age of 30. Real estate service company Jones Lang LaSalle estimates annual demand for housing to be between 150,000 and 200,000 units per year.

The JLL report also said office rents are likely to reduce in 2012 once additional supply is released to the market.

The expected CBD supply pipeline will provide approximately 60,000 sq m of additional space to the current stock of 445,000 sq m by the end of 2012.

“As a consequence, the office market is expected to remain tenant favourable during the next two years,” the report said.

Jeddah’s retail centres continue to benefit from high occupancy rates and the majority of the new supply has already been preleased, JLL added.

Its report said retail sales have increased by more than 30 percent during the last eight months which demonstrates strong consumer spending.

The first three quarters of 2011 also showed a marked improvement in Jeddah’s hotel occupancies with rates increasing five percent year-on-year, the report added.

JLL said growth in business travel is expected to fuel hotel demand in the city.

Craig Plumb, head of research at Jones Lang LaSalle MENA said: “The SR500m economic stimulus package announced earlier in 2011 has sustained the Jeddah real estate market during 2011.

“With Saudi Arabia’s oil output having been boosted to offset lower supply from other MENA producers and oil prices remaining relatively stable over recent months, there is likely to be increased investment in the infrastructure and real estate sectors of the economy over the next 12 months.”

STC launched the new BlackBerry Curve 9360 equipped with Blackberry operating system version 7 with the Blackberry monthly package for current and new customers with a one month starting from the day of purchase and with the option to purchase the device with monthly fee. Both packages offer customers a monthly free balance including voice and video calls, SMS, MMS, and an internet package.

The new Blackberry device is equipped with a 2.4 inch with a 360X480 clear display and a 800 MHz processor, 5 megapixel camera and a flash LED, 512 Ram Mb, 512 internal memory. The device is also equipped with an external memory SD Micro up to 32 Mb in addition to the device supports WiFi and Bluetooth.

The launch of the new BlackBerry Curve affirms the Company’s leadership is launching the newest and latest smart phones while at the same demonstrates the Company’s commitment to providing the latest in smart technologies. STC also uniquely provides its customers with promotions and offers for smart phones which is part of its customer centric strategy to provide the best services with the best prices, add to that the comprehensive support in terms of products, services and network.

Both STC and Research in Motion previously announced earlier a strategic partnership to provide a wide-range of content, applications, and smart solutions for Blackberry users in the Kingdom revolving around the exchange of expertise which will serve the mutual interest of both companies thus achieving customer satisfaction in terms of technologies and services.

Ritz-Carlton is to open its first hotel in Saudi Arabia this month, the luxury operator said yesterday.

The hotel in Riyadh, which has 493 rooms, is near the capital city’s diplomatic quarter.

The property was “envisioned as a royal guest palace for visiting dignitaries and heads of state”, Ritz-Carlton said.

Analysts say that luxury hotel operators are keen on Riyadh to cater for demand as the city gains in regional and international prominence. Fairmont and Four Seasons also plan to open hotels in the city.

Average room rates in Riyadh increased by 6 per cent in August to US$223 (Dh819.07) compared with the same month last year, while Jeddah had a 5.3 per cent increase to $216.32, according to data from the research company STR Global.

The hotel, which has 600-year-old olive trees imported from Lebanon, is scheduled to open on October 24.

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Godudu.com, a Dubai-based multi-lingual social networking site, is designed to allow users to converse across language barriers.

New social networking site, Godudu, has developed a platform that allows users to communicate across language barriers, allowing instant language translation to a user’s preferred language on instant chat, wall posts and pages, according to Alibek Issaev, chairman of Godudu.com.

“Translation between languages is instant, if someone posts on a user’s wall, it will show in the user’s preferred language, but if a user wants to check what the original looks like in the original language, they can click the blue icon so they can see the original language. For users who are trying to learn languages, this is a new and entertaining way to do it,” said Abdulrakhman Zulumkhanov, Godudu.com project manager.

The site can only currently be used in Arabic, English or Russian, but Godudu hopes to add Turkish in January 2012 and other languages soon after.

Godudu.com has just signed a contract in Turkey with the Turkova group, which owns Turkcell and over 150 companies and the company is planning to have a big team of moderators and developers based in Turkey.

“Right now we are working on Turkish, we recently signed with partners in Turkey, so in January we are looking at rolling out the Turkish language support then after that we will look at Chinese and the popularly spoken European languages,” said Zulumkhanov.

According to Godudu.com, the social networking site currently has 1.3 million users with 15,000 to 20,000 new users registering on a daily basis. The site has seen a large number of registrations from within the Middle East region, with users from the UAE, Saudi Arabia and most of the GCC countries.

Issaev said that he decided to develop Godudu.com because people who use different social networks are limited from communicating with each other because of language barriers.

“We do not see a Russian person in a Chinese social network, but it is very important for people from different countries to communicate and share ideas and it is very important for people today to learn new things and to develop, and because of these language barriers this is a problem. This is where we came in with our solution and we want to break these social barriers and come together on one social platform and communicate and share things,” he said.

Godudu.com also features links to other social networking sources such as Twitter. The Twitter link allows Tweets from people Godudu.com users are following on Twitter to be directly translated into the Godudu.com user’s preferred language.

“The problem on Twitter is that if a celebrity or president tweets something, only people who speak that language can understand, then we have to get this information third and fourth hand. With our website, whatever they tweet, we can integrate it into the system and you can read what they say in your language as they write about it,” said Zulumkhanov.

The Godudu.com system was developed from scratch by Godudu developers and is a self-learning system based on AI technology. According to Godudu.com, it learns from what users enter into the social networking system, so the more internet users that use the network, and the more entries they post, the more the system learns and improves itself. “We are encouraging as many people to use the system as possible. Because we are a social networking website, we want to make it as easy and comfortable as possible for users to interact with each other so we encourage users to send us feedback about the website and we always pay close attention to what they say,” said Zulumkhanov.

The social networking site has its own team of developers who are currently working on games and apps to improve the content currently offered.

“We are working on a farm app where you can do a lot of things and incorporate it into your social networking, for example, you can grow a virtual flower and then send your flower to your Godudu network friends,” said Zulumkhanov.

The site’s API has also been made as universal and easy to use as possible, according to Zulumkhanov, so that any app developer can use it and come and develop their apps. The company said that it is currently negotiating with some of the biggest application developers to develop apps for the site.

Godudu.com has also just finished developing its first iPhone app and is in the process of finalising its iPad and Android apps.

Issaev says that he hopes Godudu.com will become one of the top social networking sites worldwide within the next 12 months.

GE has announced the appointment of Dr. Manar A Al-Moneef, a Saudi Arabian national and experienced healthcare professional, as the Managing Director of Imagination Breakthrough in the Middle East and Pakistan.

Dr. Manar A Al-Moneef

Dr. Al-Moneef will be responsible for leading the business development of GE Healthcare, the healthcare operations of the company in the region, and providing strategic and technical consultancy for launching new applications and products in key emerging markets before taking them globally.

Ali Saleh, GE Healthcare’s General Manager, for Market Development, Eastern and Africa Growth markets said, “The Middle East region is focusing on innovation and original thinking to meet the pressing healthcare challenges, including a growing incidence of lifestyle diseases and rising healthcare bills. Dr. Manar Al-Moneef has proven competencies in the healthcare sector of the region, and she will drive our healthcare business growth with a focus on healthymagination, GE’s commitment to deliver better quality care to more people at lower costs.”

Dr. Al-Moneef said, “The healthcare requirements of the region are unique and call for ingenious solutions in addressing local challenges. GE’s emphasis on innovation and imagination enable our professionals to think beyond conventional boundaries, and create breakthrough innovations that will help improve the state of medical care.”

Regarded as an enterprising visionary who combines outstanding life science and business development talents, Dr Al-Moneef was the Director General of Health Care & Life Sciences at the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), previously.

She has worked as Director of Molecular Pathology & Genetics at King Abdulaziz Medical City, National Guard Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She was also appointed as an Assistant Professor at King Saud University for Medical Studies.

Dr. Al-Moneef has a Doctoral Degree in Molecular Oncology from Leicester Warwick University, United Kingdom and a Master Degree in Molecular Medicine form Cambridge University, United Kingdom. She has published several papers on Molecular Medicine, health care and life science strategies.

With over 10,000 GE healthcare technologies serving a large network of hospitals and healthcare providers, GE has a strong presence in the Middle East. The company has a long history of public and private sector partnerships in the region, where it supports healthcare providers with advanced technologies and solutions to address the full spectrum of medical needs.

Nasair held an Open Day in Riyadh, KSA to recruit Saudi Nationals looking to join the company as flight attendants. Candidates hoping to join the team were received and greeted by Nasair representatives, and were given the opportunity to discuss their career options and the benefits of working for Nasair.

Naiem Al Shabanah, Executive Director of Group HR & Administration, NAS Holding said, “Nasair – the first Saudi low fare carrier – is committed to giving back to the community, and we are continuing to employ Saudi youths following the Company’s strategy that supports the Government’s effort in employing the Saudi nationals.”

He continued to comment, “Today we see many young Saudi’s wishing to join the aviation, travel and tourism industry as it flourishes and grows in the Kingdom, and we are here to provide for this need by offering these individuals a career as accomplished cabin crew members with an international lifestyle, great benefits and an environment in which they can hone their skills and develop their talents. This is a truly local effort coming within a strategy to recruit 150 during the coming period. We are investing in our national youth strongly and we wish to continue to strive in this arena as we grow our award winning team.”

At the open day, Mohammed Saeed Al-Ghamdi, Specialist, Crew Recruitment for Nasair, presented details of the training, benefits, job descriptions, minimum requirements and opportunities to assist the attending candidates, aged 19-25.

Nasair hopes to recruit 30 new staff and identify additional future candidates from this successful event to expand its evolving team and commit to its internal vision of having the best team of people to serve its growing base of Customers domestically and abroad.

For more information Visit FlyNas.com