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Leisure destination for overworked businessmen

The MAS Fabric Plant which is the only privately owned Fabric Park in Asia committed to supplying utilities and shared services to investors is now opening new avenues to increase revenue by introducing the Park as a leisure destination for the overworked businessmen.

“In addition to the development of the park, MFP has developed the former housing complex of the zone, which consists of over 50 chalets as the Thirasara Leisure Village,” COO, MFP, Lalith Samarawickrema said.

These chalets have been developed to accommodate executives and managers of business units within MFP and around this area and further extended to clients, who reserve these chalets for leisure and are willing to engage in the variety of outdoor activities offered by MFP.

Of the 95 houses available thirteen have been converted to luxury fully furnished holiday homes. Each chalet with the help of architects, have been touched by MFP to give them each a unique character from titanium to timber flooring, spacious air conditioned rooms, landscaped gardens with ample parking and most importantly the shade of large trees to cut down the heat of the nearby Kurunegala District.

The luxury chalet has two bedrooms with attached baths, the super deluxe has five rooms and the deluxe has three bedrooms.

The quiet disposition of the park surrounded by paddy fields, a village and bordered on one side by the Ma Oya is anything but an industrial zone polluted with fumes and noise from the factories. The housing area is located well away from the industrial area and any working atmosphere. Each chalet is equipped with a kitchen, dinning and living rooms.

The Thirasara Leisure Village offers a range of activities to visitors from rock climbing, mountain hiking, ab sailing, short course tracking, bicycling and gymnasium facilities and to those who enjoy river bathing private access to the shallower regions of the Ma Oya. It is not a place to feel bored for the active holiday maker as an experienced gym instructor will be there to keep one going.

The PowerPlay Fitness Frontier offers a residential dietary program for a minimum of two weeks, to reduce body fat, calculated from a Body Fat Monitor. While the gym instructor puts one on a rigorous exercise schedule the chef will be preparing a diet plan.

“MFP is located on a major trunk road, which leads to destinations such as Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Polonnaruwa, Jaffna through Dambulla and Anuradhapura,” Lalith said.

“This could be attractive for travel groups travelling from Colombo to Kandy, the Pinnawela elephant orphanage and changing the course of the journey towards the North and East of Sri Lanka. Also, as MFP is located only 1 1/4 hours from Kandy, this venue is ideal to accommodate guests travelling to Kandy during the peak seasons such as the Kandy Esala Perahera, the Bradby Shield, Rugby Sevens etc,” he said.

Union Assurance top achievers tour China

Union Assurance General Distribution offered an incentive tour to China, which comprised a group of 19 from across the island. The participants were selected on the basis of their performance in general insurance business during the year 2008.

Union Assurance offered this educational and leisure trip to the world’s most populous nation as a reward for the hard work that contributed to the growth momentum in the year 2008 in the general insurance business.

“It was indeed a great tour for us because we were able not only to see the Great Wall which is the only man-made structure visible from the moon but also able to walk on it. We were also able to experience the ancient China and visited many important sites,” said Assistant General Manager, General Distribution Branches and CMU, Nihal Handunge.

They spent five days and four nights in capital Beijing which is also a place symbolizing China’s history and modern-day technology. Union Assurance plans to continue this system of rewards, which is part of a rewards program for its sales team.

Union Assurance top life achievers toured Bangkok for a five day visit.

The tour was offered based on stringent selection criteria, their business performance and customer retention in 2008 was also taken into consideration to be qualified for this tour. Among the selected, fifty two participants were Insurance Advisors, team leaders and the sales management team.

The tour competition was open to all life sales staff across the island. Assistant General Manager, Life Distribution Nalaka Dharmaratne congratulated the winners for their contributions and business achievements in life business.

Assistant General Manager Sales Force Administration J.M. Niyaz said that this nature of tour gives a motivation to the sales staff to benchmark themselves against their own performance year over year since the organization each year raises the bar to qualify for this nature of tours.

Hilton unveils ‘Meetings for Free’ promotion

Meetings still matter - Research:

Hilton Hotels Corporation (Hilton) in Asia Pacific has launched a new industry first. Anyone making a bedroom booking before June 30 for any date in 2009 will be eligible to receive a complimentary day meetings package including meeting room facilities, refreshments and lunch. The offer extends across all Hilton Family hotel brands in Asia Pacific: Hilton, Conrad and Doubletree by Hilton.

Meetings for Free applies to any conference, training or sales event held at any one of 47 Hilton Family hotels across 14 Asia Pacific countries for meetings from as few as two to as many as 100 residential delegates.

The promotion is open for bookings made during a limited period between April 15 and June 30, 2009, for events taking place throughout the year until December 31, 2009.

Hilton’s Meetings for Free represents an inspired solution to one of the problems currently facing modern businesses - how to ensure effective business communications whilst meeting and travel budgets are being cut. The savings represented by Meetings for Free will go some way to helping organizations to continue to meet offsite, enabling them to be stronger and more effective through the current challenging times.

Supporting Hilton’s belief that meetings matter is some independent research commissioned by Hilton across Asia Pacific.

This found that 77 percent of those surveyed believe that offsite meetings are a necessity not a luxury, 94 percent that meetings can build stronger business relationships and 91 percent that meetings build stronger bonds between teams.

Technology has provided new means of communication which can be used in place of a face to face meeting, and 82 percent of those questioned agreed that cost considerations and these improved technologies were now resulting in offsite meetings occurring less often.

However 61 percent stated that they would rather work for an organisation that invested in regular offsite meetings.

Other insights that should inspire businesses to take this preference for meeting in person even more seriously are the details of exactly what people do whilst on a conference call; 81 percent admitted to carrying on working, 81 percent check their emails, 75 percent have side conversations with colleagues, 35 percent visit the bathroom with their hand phone whilst on the call and 20 percent help themselves to an alcoholic drink.

“Given the trends we are now seeing regarding meetings, and as a long-standing partner for meeting organisers, we at Hilton felt it was time to play our own part to help organisations bring their people together and by doing so be better equipped to respond to these challenging times.

By providing Meetings for Free we are not only offering a great deal, but in our own way making a contribution to the health of business across the region,” Flack said.