This weekend we were mentioned in the travel section of The Age, Melbourne on 1 November 2007 in an article called "Slick Dragon." It is always nice to be compared with our more pricey friends: "Dragonfly is less exclusive than Banyan Tree but still a five-star experience at about a quarter of the price". Full article here.

This week we signed an agreement with our partners in the Middle East to confirm the opening of the first Dragonfly in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Dragonfly @ Burjuman is well under construction and will open early Spring 2008 on the 6th floor of the fashion forward BurJuman Centre shopping mall.

This week we were contacted by another customer who likes the Dragonfly brand so much that she wanted to get a Dragonfly tattoo on her leg.

Dragonfly was awarded the Readers' Choice award for best massage in Shanghai this year by popular magazine SH. Click here to see the details.

We have just learned that our interview with CNBC was aired this week - no more details yet but we had a phone call from an old friend who saw the report and re-established contact with us.

We are again pleased to have an international intern join us for a few months. Miss Jill Weiss is coming from Germany where she is studying "International Business and Communication in Asia with focus Chinese" at the HTWG Konstanz, Germany (stands for Hochschule fuer Technik, Wirtschaft und Gestaltung).

Today we relaunch the Dragonfly blog - with a new format and with greater ease of use we intend to update this more frequently.

After 8 months of trials in Beijing and Shanghai we have today launched and rolled out into several shops in Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou a range of relaxing facial treatments in Dragonfly retreats that feature high quality Sothy's products from France.

In keeping with the philosophy of Dragonfly our facials are relaxation focused and manually applied - no machines utilized. Our goal is to leave you even more refreshed and relaxed after your facial - which of course can be combined with our nailspa and massage services to form a complete pampering package.

We are pleased that Gervais Yam has joined us for 3 months as our first international intern in RnR.

Gervais is pursuing a full-time Diploma in Business Management at
Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore, specializing in Customer Relationship Management.

Recently we are seeing a lot of trade press coverage about the growth of the Spa Industry in China.
China International Business had a piece in June called "Massaging the Masses".
The month before Spa Asia had a feature "China's changing Chi" and the month before that Asia Spa had a feature about China that included Dragonfly.

RnR is officially open for business.

This week we held an early Chinese New Year party for our new staff in Suzhou - Dragonfly @ Jinjihu. I am always impressed by how wonderful our teams of staff inside the shop are and this new team is no exception. What intrigued me in talking to some customers in Suzhou is how delighted they are to have a classy (but easily affordable) alternative like Dragonfly available and one of our staff commented that they are starting to call the shop their "2nd Place".

(Starbucks likes to consider itself "the 3rd Place" - and since Starbucks is just down the road form our Suzhou retreat - this is a strong compliment!

This week our very own Vivi Lau was featured on Zhejiang Radio, on a syndication called "Soulfire" as part of the Perfect Mix series which is a new age lifestyle program. Zhejiang province is located to the west of Shanghai.

Many thanks to Jenny Zhu who hosted this show.

Dragonfly management will be hosting our first "Dragonfly Partner Conference" in Chongqing later this week, in order to update all of our partners about recent developments in the company and plans for the year 2007.

We are pleased to be able to hold this conference in the backyard of our growing Dragonfly Academy - so that all partners can see for themselves the enthusiasm and professionalism of our students.

The world's favorite travel magazine, Conde Nast Traveller (UK) has written glowing remarks about Dragonfly after a visit to our Forbidden City retreat:
"You can't get a better foot massage than at Dragonfly... "
We couldn't have said it any better ourselves.

Conde Nast Traveller Jan 07