Dubai Travel Guide

Emirates has commenced a direct flight linking Dubai and China’s southern Guangzhou City, the country’s third largest air hub, the carrier’s Beijing office told Xinhua on Wednesday.

Flights EK362/3 currently run six times weekly, except on Friday.

Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, is Emirates’ fourth China destination, along with Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. It now has 48 weekly flights to the country.

Emirates flies the route with a modern A330-200 aircraft, in a two-class configuration offering 27 business class seats and 251 in economy class. It also has 13.6 tonnes of belly-hold cargo capacity.

The flight EK362 takes off from Dubai at 10:35 a.m. (local time) and arrives in Guangzhou at 10:20 p.m.. It then turns around as EK363 at 11:55 p.m. and arrives in Dubai at 3:40 a.m. the next day.

Xinhua

As Dubai gets ready to become the first Gulf city to introduce a rapid transit system, a debate is raging on the impact of leasing naming rights of metro stations to companies from across the world.

The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has placed advertisements in a number of prominent American and European magazines to invite bidders.

Officials are excited that Dubai Metro will be the first in the world to lease naming rights of stations and both Red and Green lines to companies.

But residents are not pleased. Many in the city believe that the identity of the city could be ruined by this exercise.

Dubai Institute of Technology, the Science and Technology arm for TechnoPark and Economic Zones World, a new member of the International Network for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (INSME) has been selected as key co-organiser for the 2009 INSME Annual Meeting, to be held for the first time in Dubai.

The two parties, mandated to encourage technological development via entrepreneurship, will also nurture cooperation agreements between INSME members and companies within TechnoPark.

Speaking about TechnoPark’s commitment to the SME community, Hamad Al Hashemi, Managing Director of TechnoPark, stated: “We completely support INSME’s efforts to act as a facilitator for innovation-led growth. A fundamental cornerstone of our activities is to aid the SME community and we have set up the Dubai Institute of Technology (DIT) to create a self-sustained environment within the park to support the development of new technologies, the establishment of high potential technology start-ups, and delivering relevant services to the private and public sectors.”
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