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April 17, 2007

Delta Opens Multicultural Ticket Lobby at Atlanta Airport

UPS to Open Transport Hub in Shanghai

InterContinental Hotels Grants Loan to Costa Rican Farmer

Hartsfield-Jackson Gets RFID-enabled Vending Machines

Porsche Cars North America’s March Sales up for Canada

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Delta Opens Multicultural Ticket Lobby at Atlanta Airport

Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. has opened a $26 million new ticket lobby at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport that includes multilingual signage and check-in services.

The 12,500-square foot lobby includes signs in Spanish and English and will display seven languages by the end of the year. The airline will announce audio messages in English and Spanish.

The self-service check-in kiosks are expected to serve 8,500 domestic and international fliers per day.

Delta services more than 1,060 peak-day departures out of Atlanta.

Visit www.delta.com for more information.

 

 

UPS to Open Transport Hub in Shanghai

Atlanta package delivery and logistics company United Parcel Service Inc. has signed an agreement finalizing the construction of a transport hub in Shanghai, China.

The hub is to operate 24 hours per day, seven days per week, allowing for later pickup times for packages leaving Shanghai. It is expected to open next year.

Package sorters will handle 17,000 packages per hour by 2012 and employ 1,000 people by 2010.

The 1 million square-foot hub is currently under construction at the city's Pudong International Airport, which is being expanded to handle 60 million passengers and 4.2 million tons of cargo per year by the end of this year.

UPS has invested $600 million in China over the past five years and flies to more points in China than any other U.S. freight or passenger airline.

Visit www.ups.com for more information.

 

InterContinental Hotels Grants Loan to Costa Rican Farmer

Atlanta-based InterContinental Hotels Group has issued a $10,000 micro-enterprise loan to a rural Costa Rican family though the fundraising of the Tropics Foundation.

The foundation is the fundraising division of CATIE, the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center, in Turrialba, Costa Rica.

The gift from InterContinental will enable the Fuentes-Gamboa family to enhance the operation of their organic coffee and sugar cane farm.  The farm is located in a rural agricultural area near the city of Turrialba, some 30 miles from the Costa Rican capital of San Jose.

Members of the Tropics Foundation and representatives of InterContinental recently visited the Fuentes-Gamboa farm to view its operations.

The loan will be paid back by the Fuentes-Gamboa family over a period of time and will enable other qualified loan applicants to benefit from the gift.

The gift is designed to help people who utilize environmentally-friendly agricultural practices.

CATIE focuses on improving economic conditions throughout rural Latin America and the Caribbean as well as leadership development. 

Contact HollyBeth Anderson, executive director of the Tropics Foundation, at hbanderson@tropicsfoundation.org or (404) 373-1656 for more information. Visit www.ichotelsgroup.com for information about the hotel chain. Visit www.catie.ac.cr for information about CATIE.

 

Hartsfield-Jackson Gets RFID-enabled Vending Machines

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport now offers cashless payments at vending machines by way of radio frequency identification technologies.

Travelers carrying Mastercard Paypass, Visa Contactless, Amex ExpressPay, and Discover Network credit cards that are equipped with radio frequency identification chips can now make purchases at vending machines throughout Hartsfield by waving their cards in front of the machines.

Westminster, Colo.-based SkyeTek Inc., a provider of embedded RFID reader technology, partnered with Austin, Texas-based Isochron Inc., a which works with vending technology for the food and beverage industry, to produce the technology for Hartsfield.

For more information, visit Isochron’s website at www.isochron.com or call (512) 732-2600.  Visit www.skyetek.com or call (720) 565-0441.

Porsche Cars North America’s March Sales up for Canada

Porsche Cars North America Inc., which imports and distributes Porsche automobiles in the United States and Canada from Atlanta, announced March sales in Canada increased by 3 percent.

The company sold a total of 183 Porsches, up from sales of 178 units in March 2006. Year-to-date sales of 406 units are up 7 percent compared to the first three months of 2006.

The Boxster/Cayman series and Cayenne SUV were the company’s highest selling models.

For more information, contact Tony Fouladpour at (770) 290-3667.