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We were looking for somewhere to live. We had sold up in Bulgaria and were carrying all our worldly possessions with us when we landed at Tocumen airport in Panama City on Sunday evening. We had a month to decide whether it was the place for us as Bistra, my Bulgarian girlfriend, only had a 30 day tourist visa.

We had return tickets back through Jamaica and London Gatwick to Sofia but didn’t really want to travel back to the Bulgarian winter to hear all our friends saying ‘I told you so’.

Why Panama. When we decided to leave Bulgaria, because of its corrupt nature, our first idea was the USA as Bistra is the holder of a green card, but on further reflection we did not want to get caught up in the rat race again and end up doing another office job. A year earlier a friend had upped sticks and left for Costa Rica, never to be heard of since I may add, so that got us thinking about Central America and one evening over several bottles of wine in the Sofia Radisson Hotel, Graham (a relic from colonial times) said that Panama was a good place to visit.

The mention of Panama immediately brings to mind the Canal, hats and cigars but at this time it was also in the news because of a British man faking his death and disappearing to Panama only to hand himself into the UK police five years later – safe and well. So the next morning I entered the Internet with anticipation and rather than going straight to CardiffCityMad.com I entered Panama Investment into Google and I was very pleasantly surprised.

A major project to enlarge the canal so that it could handle the biggest ships of today compared to 100 years ago had just started, Panama City was a mixture of Singapore, Hong Kong and Manhattan and there were a selection of residence schemes available so that for a minimum investment we could settle. 

 A taste of what was in store occurred two weeks before we were due to leave when our newly appointed lawyers told us that our first full day in Panama City had just being announced as a public holiday and, by the way, the following Monday was non-working as well!

We were met at the airport and taken to the luxury apartment we had rented for the month which was situated on Panama Bay. What we weren’t informed of before booking was the construction of a new elevated highway running along the coast which was behind schedule so the workforce was working around the clock to finish it before the Presidential elections in May ensuing many sleepless nights

I had arranged to meet  ‘a friend of a friend’ in Panama on our first day so that we could have a bit of orientation not knowing that this man was very well orientated around the bars of Panama City so a very interesting evening was enjoyed by all. This help was especially appreciated as most of the Panamanians we had met had so far could speak about as much English as I could Spanish.

Tuesday arrived with a 9 o’clock meeting at the lawyer’s office. I had done as much research as I could before but, as usual, most of the issues do not materialise out until you meet face to face. One by one our long list of residency options were whittled down to a solitary choice – we both had to invest individually $300,000 to stay in Panama which was slightly more than the $302,000 joint option we had discussed via email for the last 4 months!

Anyway, we now knew the situation and had to set to work deciding if this was the place for us or another long winter in Bulgaria beckoned.  

We had been working with Esteban, a real estate agent not the Columbian drug baron, for several months trying to locate suitable locations to live in. We knew that we wanted to be in the centre but nothing could prepare us for the traffic problems in Panama so it was not really a difficult decision that we wanted to be in the real centre. The place we selected was called Los Congrejos, the crabs!, which is a mini mixture of Soho in Manhattan and Covent Garden in London, full of trendy bars and restaurants.

This location created and solved a problem as there were not many apartments that met our criteria (new, luxury and cheap) so that we had viewed them all by the end of the week and decided which one to buy. Many an agent tried to persuade us that other for sale apartments were in east, west, north or east El Cangrejo but if any place was more than five minutes walk from our new favourite bar it was off the list.

We bought two apartments, one to rent out and one to live in, directly off a builder for a total of $250,000 which nearly solved one residency requirement (a Certificate of Deposit for $50,000 would top it up to the $300,000). Buying off the builder did not endear us to the estate agents but one has to look after ones best interests.

Now, after a weekend of drinking and visiting more top restaurants, the search was on for the other investment. Esteban had mentioned that he had nearly bought a shop fronted office but couldn’t get the finance together, so I figured if a realtor wanted to buy this place it was probably worth a visit. The office was bang right in the centre of the famous banking area called Obarrio. It was the right price at $300,000 and there was a shortage of available quality places to rent – so that was the end of residency requirement number two.

You may think that this was all a bit impetuous but we had a lot to achieve in a month!

Now that we had decided to stay, our lawyers said that the next thing to do is to register our passports as the start of our residency application process – and what an experience that was.

We were taken to the immigration office at eight in the morning to meet the girl who had been there a six in order to get us a good early ‘number’ for the queuing system. We got numbers 39 and 40 and at 8:30 it was announced that if you didn’t have a number by then please come back the next day.

The immigration office was in stark contrast to the shiny skyscrapers in the city centre. It was an old building designed to handle 50 people at a time but there must have been 500 in there. I don’t know where they all came from but we were the only two non-Spanish speakers in the place. Three hours later we emerged with our little bits of paper which meant that we had only to come back here four more times if we were ever to achieve full residency.

Now it was full speed ahead to complete the transaction by the end of the month before Bistra’s tourist Visa ran out but there was another problem in the way – Christmas. Panamanians enjoy a much more relaxed style of life than us Europeans, which is a good thing, but coming up to Christmas they are only concentrating on one thing – and that was not getting our transactions completed. We were told that there are only three main holiday periods in Panama – November, December and February!

We were ready to complete the property transaction on 26th December, a working day in Panama when no-one wanted to work at all, we managed to get the lawyers and developers together at 14:00 and we signed the paperwork that would allow us to get the utilities connected before our moving in date of 31st December.

But there was still much to do in the intervening five days. We had to buy all the furniture and electrical goods and get them installed. Everyone said ‘forget about that crazy plan’ but with a bit of encouragement our suppliers did the impossible and we moved in at 6 pm on 31st December exhausted but still ready for the big night out to celebrate our achievement.

Panama is a fantastic country and we have now set up our own company – Panama Investment Vacations – to help others make the transition in a more orderly manner!

 

Introduction

Hotel Industry in India is witnessing tremendous boom in recent years and going through an interesting phase. One of the major reasons for the increase in demand for hotel rooms in the country is the boom in the overall Economy and high growth in sectors like information technology, telecom, retail and real estate. Rising stock market and new business opportunities are also attracting hordes of foreign investors and international corporate travelers to look for business opportunities in the country particularly growth in tourism sector. As hotel industry is inextricably linked to the tourism industry and the growth in the Indian tourism industry has fuelled the growth of Indian hotel industry.

Explosive economic growth in India ignites unquenchable demand for hotel rooms. With huge investments flowing into India for the development of infrastructure such as roads, highways, airports and convention centers, interest in hotel developments is hitting new highs as tourism, business and travel are on the rise.

The booming tourism industry has had a cascading effect on the hospitality sector with an increase in the occupancy ratios and average room rates. And with the continuing surge in demand, many global hospitality majors have evinced a keen interest in the Indian hospitality sector. It is estimated that India is likely to have around 40 international hotel brands by 2011.

Opportunities

The spurt in India’s tourism industry growth has had a ripple effect on its hospitality sector. Rising income levels and spending power combined with the governments open sky policy have provided a major thrust. The industry is growing at a very rapid pace and there is a demand for more rooms both in metros and smaller towns. It is estimated that India is likely to have around 40 international hotel brands by 2011.

India’s booming hospitality industry has transformed into a veritable basket of the choicest of rooms, food and beverage, health and business facilities, travel packages and everything that you can think of. New global entrants are vying with existing local players to provide world-class services at prices suited to every pocket.

An estimated 4.4 million tourists are expected to visit India with an annual average growth rate of 12% in the next few years. The domestic tourist market is also flourishing. The commonwealth games in 2010 will add to the demand for quality accommodation.The Government of India’s Incredible India destination campaign and the Atithi Devo Bhavah campaign have also helped the growth of domestic and international tourism and consequently the hotel industry.

The opening up of the aviation industry in India has exciting opportunities for hotel industry as it relies on airlines to transport 80% of international arrivals. The government’s decision to substantially upgrade 28 regional airports in smaller towns and privatization & expansion of Delhi and Mumbai airport will improve the business prospects of hotel industry in India. And the upgrading of national highways connecting various parts of India has opened new avenues for the development of budget hotels in India. Taking advantage of this opportunity Tata group and another hotel chain called ‘Homotel’ have entered this business segment.

If you want to read article go to second part of this – Information of hotel industry laws in india – part2.

Every hotel, restaurant, bar and nightclub in California is warned repeatedly how dangerous it is to their reputation, income, liability and their Alcohol Beverage and Control License if they serve alcohol to a minor. The knowledge of this danger has recently been enforced in the minds of hotel and restaurant owners in the Coachella Valley cities of La Quinta, Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, Indio, Coachella and Cathedral City.

 But the lesson learned in the Coachella Valley holds true also for restaurants and hotels in Anaheim, Long Beach, San Diego, Orange County, Santa Ana, Irvine, Huntington Beach, orange, Costa Mesa, Carlsbad, Santa Monica, Newport Beach, Buena Park, the Inland Empire area of Rancho Cucamonga, Riverside, and Temecula and up the coast to Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo as well.

 In August two restaurants in the Coachella Valley, one in Rancho Mirage and another in La Quinta had their liquor licenses suspended for 30 days after serving alcohol to minors. Both restaurants chose to shut down and use the time for remodeling.

 It’s bad enough if the Alcohol and Beverage Control Board catches a restaurant serving alcohol to a minor, but what is unusual in these two cases is how the restaurants were caught and sad what happened to the minors.

 In the case of the Rancho Mirage restaurant, the minor died in a car accident. In the La Quinta incident, the minor jumped to his death from a pickup truck.

 It gets even worse. In the Rancho Mirage restaurant case, the minor was riding in a car with a friend who had also been drinking but who was not a minor. Both died when their vehicle hit a curb and rolled over. Both had been drinking at the restaurant. The older of the two had a blood alcohol reading of 0.23. The minor had a blood alcohol reading of 0.12. The legal limit in California is 0.08.

 In the La Quinta restaurant incident, the 19 year-old minor had dinner with his girlfriend, with the twenty-two year-old male driver of the vehicle, the driver’s wife and their two year-old child.

 At some point, it was reported, the driver of the pickup truck struck his wife. The minor then threatened to jump from the vehicle if the driver continued to fight with his wife. The minor kept his promise while the truck was driving between 30 to 40 miles per hour.

 The La Quinta restaurant was also hit with a two year probation, which if violated, could lead to the revocation of their liquor license.

 This litany of events does not even consider what number of civil lawsuits may be filed as a result of these two incidents, the grief of the families of those who died, or the losses the two restaurants can expect to incur as a result of the inattention of their employees.

 When a restaurant or hotel serves an adult, in California there is generally no responsibility if that adult is later involved in a drunk driving accident. There are no actions taken by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Not so when the restaurant or hotel serves alcohol to an intoxicated minor. Then all bets are off.

 If you have a food & wine, liquor, alcohol or hotel, restaurant, bar or nightclub legal issue in San Diego, Palm Springs, Orange County or anywhere in Southern California, we have the knowledge and resources to be your Newport Beach Hotel & Restaurant Lawyers, and Palm Desert Wine & Alcohol Attorneys. For this reason, be sure to hire a California law firm with hotel, restaurant, food & wine lawyers who can represent you from Palm Springs, San Luis Obispo, Laguna, Newport and Huntington Beach, Corona del Mar, Anaheim, Irvine, La Jolla, Santa Barbara, Temecula, Cambria, Paso Robles, Palm Desert, Yorba Linda, Carlsbad, San Diego, Costa Mesa, Westminster, and Murrieta, to Indian Wells and La Quinta.

 If you have an food and wine, alcohol, liquor or hotel, restaurant, bar or nightclub legal issue, and need to know your rights, call the Law Offices of R. Sebastian Gibson, or visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com  and learn how we can assist you. You can also call us to speak directly to Sebastian Gibson on the phone about your legal matter.