Nutritix

Category: Business

  • The gigantic luxury hotel in the middle of nowhere

    The gigantic luxury hotel in the middle of nowhere

    Nothing much lies on Qatar’s border with Saudi Arabia. A few sunbaked outposts and miles and miles of vast, empty desert in all directions. 

    Then, earlier this year, something very different appeared in the middle of this nowhere: A huge, gleaming luxury hotel complex, complete with its own theme park.

    The Hilton Salwa Beach Resort & Villas is clearly no ordinary hotel. 

    Seen from the air it resembles an entire coastal town. Pristine twin beaches peel away from a central harbor. Above the sands, bright white villas and buildings cluster around blue swimming pools. Behind them, an oasis of greenery. It’s one of the Middle East’s largest resorts.

    So what happens, when a gigantic upscale hotel appears miles from anywhere just as a pandemic freezes global travel?

    It gets really busy, according to Etienne-Charles Gailliez, the resort’s general manager. On opening its doors in February it became a staycation hit with locals, he says. More recently it’s been a popular destination for visitors and business travelers from the wider region.

    There’s plenty of room. Hilton Salwa Beach has 84 villas, ranging from two to four bedrooms, with private pools and direct access to the white-sand beach (prices from US$ 1,500 a night). There are 31 Arabian village-style apartments and villas, while the main hotel has 246 rooms and suites.

    The huge grounds also contain more than 20 food and drink outlets, including seven gourmet dining options, a high-end spa with VIP suites, sports courts, swimming pools surrounded by landscaped gardens, corporate facilities, and a marina.

    On top of that, there’s Qatar’s largest theme park, featuring dozens of attractions, including “King Cobra,” a thrilling twin tube ride that sends riders into the mouth of a massive snake-like structure.

  • A Grand English Castle in the Wiltshire Countryside

    A Grand English Castle in the Wiltshire Countryside

    If you have notions of living in a proper English castle, Devizes Castle in Wiltshire offers the expected castellations and turrets as well as a history that dates to the 11th century.

    The current castle was built in the 1830s and stands on top of ruins of a former royal household that was passed down through kings and queens for 500 years from the 1130s, until 1648 when it was dismantled in the English Civil War.

    The first castle was built on the site by Bishop Osmund of Salisbury around 1080, according to Savills, which has the listing. After a fire, it was rebuilt in stone in 1113 and claimed by King Stephen of Blois in the 1130s.

    It was passed down through the royal family over the years and was frequently visited by monarchs, including King John, Henry III, and Edward I. The old castle eventually passed to Henry VIII, who gave it to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, but later reclaimed it after their divorce. 

    Today, all that remains of the original castle is its mound, the outline of the moat, and some foundations. 

    Despite the fact that the current five-story castle dates to the 1830s, “it looks like a proper medieval British castle,” listing agent George Nares said. “On that elevated position, it looks like a mini-Windsor Castle.”

    And “because of that elevated position, it has fantastic views,” he said. To the east, you’re looking out over the town of Devizes, and to the west, “you’re seeing the rolling countryside of Wiltshire.”

    It’s very private, he said. “you’re within the castle walls, once you go through the gatehouse, so it is very secluded from the town.”

    The castle has “lovely big rooms that are fantastic for entertaining,” Mr. Nares said.

  • The oil land with no electricity

    The oil land with no electricity

    There is a rhythm to the frenzy in this tailoring shop in the heartland of Nigeria’s oil zone.

    The whirring of four electric sewing machines snips from two industrial-sized scissors and the sizzle of moist fabric as steam billows from a large pressing iron.

    But another sounds jars as the six sweaty men work: the metallic grind of a generator. It is behind a wall to muzzle its noise, but that cannot hide its high pitch or the smoky fumes it exudes.

    “I have two of those, just in case one fails,” says Ozu Adah, a lean-muscled man with cropped hair who runs this shop in Choba, a university community in the southern state of Rivers.

    Like millions of other small business owners in Nigeria, the 37-year-old tailor cannot rely on electricity from the national grid as blackouts are common and the 5,000 megawatts distributed is only enough to serve around five million average households in urban areas.

    Most of Nigeria’s 210 million people must provide their own electricity – Africa’s largest economy is run on a variety of Chinese- and Lebanese-made generators

    “Since I was born, I have never experienced a stable power supply. We call ourselves the giant of Africa but we can’t fix electricity,” complains Mr. Adah as he works on a buttonhole. 

    Despite being blessed with large oil and gas reserves and hydro and solar resources, successive governments since independence in 1960 have failed to achieve a stable electricity supply.

    With just weeks to the next presidential election, all three front-runners – Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Peter Obi of the Labour Party – have listed fixing the power supply as a key point in their manifestoes.

    Though the campaign promises can sound hollow given outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari failed to deliver during his eight years in office on providing at least 20,000 more megawatts.

    Mr. Adah’s operations rely on electricity and he spends 3,000 nairas ($6; £5) every day to fuel his generator.

    But since November, there has been a widespread shortage of fuel in Nigeria, which has worsened recently, forcing many to sleep overnight in queues at petrol stations.

    He is frustrated that he lives in an oil-rich state with so little to offer its citizens.

    As a boy, he dreamed of working in the oil industry – as his father had done. But by the time he finished studying geology at the University of Port Harcourt, he was unable to find a job in that sector.

    Instead, he turned to what he saw his mother do – making clothes. She used the popular but labor-intensive manual Butterfly machines imported from China.

    Like a generation of young people forced to turn to jobs they would rather not do – he found an innovative way of pursuing it, using modern electric-powered machines.

  • Elon Musk’s Tesla lost $140m on Bitcoin in 2022

    Elon Musk’s Tesla lost $140m on Bitcoin in 2022

    Tesla made a $140m (£113.5m) loss on its Bitcoin investments in 2022, according to filings.

    The electric car maker told the US regulator it lost $204m on Bitcoin overall, though it gained back $64m through trading.

    Tesla put $1.5bn into Bitcoin in early 2021, with chief executive Elon Musk saying it would be accepted as payment.

    It changed course a few weeks later, and Tesla has since sold most of its Bitcoin holdings.

    It now holds about $184m of Bitcoin.

    Mr Musk has been among the most high-profile champions of cryptocurrency, with his pronouncements on social media often driving significant trading activity.

    Tesla’s February 2021 Bitcoin purchase caused the cryptocurrency to rise in price by more than 25% to $48,000 – a record high at the time.

    It rose again in March 2021, when Mr Musk tweeted Tesla would allow customers to make their car purchases using Bitcoin. This enabled people in the US to secure orders with the equivalent of a $100 deposit in Bitcoin.

    But the cryptocurrency subsequently fell by more than 10% two months later, when the firm backpedaled on this plan, citing climate change concerns.

    According to the UK Treasury, Bitcoin’s global annual energy consumption is estimated to be roughly 39% of the UK’s – and some estimates put the cryptocurrency’s even higher.

    Its price soared to almost $70,000 in November 2022 before crashing by more than 50% when Tesla decided to offload most of its holdings.

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