After much work and years of preparation, the The Ritz-Carlton, Dubai International Financial CentreDubai International Financial Centre is at last opening its doors today.

With 341 rooms, the new luxury hotel will offer Dubai tourists and residents alike all they have come to expect from the Ritz-Carlton brand.  The center also features 124 executive residences and is actually the second Ritz-Carlton to open in Dubai and is sixth property in the region for the luxury hotel company.

We certainly wouldn’t mind a visit to this particular Ritz, with French art deco rooms featuring floor to ceiling windows and spacious work areas.  Right now the hotel is offering a special rate for the grand opening, for a mere $260 per night you can enjoy all that the Ritz can offer, which is quite a lot if you ask us.

Wow, talk about big luxury news.  According to a recent press release, preparations are already underway to turn a portion of the Belgian Chateau de Versailles into a luxury hotel.

Now the Palace of Versailles is getting ready to add to its list of functions: preparations are underway for a Belgian company to turn The Hotel du Grand Controle, traditionally home to the palace’s treasurers, into a luxury hotel.

The initiative is meant to spur a two-pronged plan to exploit the economic potential of certain valuable, but expensively maintained and often damaged buildings while simultaneously pursuing their renovation. But the handing over of a chunk of treasured public heritage to a private operator is an unusual occurrence in France.

The luxury hotel is slated for a late 2011 opening, with 23 bedrooms and suites at the offer.

Luxury hotel chain Ritz-Carlton has just announced a new loyalty program today and revealed many high-end names that the chain has partnered with.

Ritz-Carlton Rewards will go far and wide to provide complimentary stays and airline flights to their customers, as well as clothing by names such as Vera Wang and clothing house Neiman Marcus.

Much like competing programs such as InterContinental’s Priority Club or Hilton HHonors, guests will also be able to redeem points for flights.

“No other luxury hotel company comes close to providing such a full range of opportunities to earn and redeem points and experience some truly exceptional and exotic adventures,” said Ritz-Carlton boss Herve Humler.

Ritz-Carlton has long shied away from a loyalty club, maintaining that its customers were different from those of its parent chain Marriott and wouldn’t be interested in such a program.

So we all love our cats, but how much do you really looooveeee them?  Enough to send them on a separate luxury vacation?  Well then, you have found just that with the new Longcroft Luxury Cat Hotel in England.

Dedicated to pampering your feline, the Longcroft Luxury Cat Hotel offers your kitty a classical mewsic environment complete with four poster beds, oxygenated water fountains, spa treatments, organic foods served on silver platters and pretty much any special luxury request you might have.

We like it, but kitty, it’s our turn first!

Professional DJ’s, or aspiring DJ’s or even some plain party people, as long as they have the extra moolah would probably like this luxury item we’re featuring in this article.

Start a party anytime, anywhere with the Pioneer Pro- 1400 FLT, a mobile DJ that is the concept of French design student Vivier Raphael. This DJ-on-the-go is both sturdy and trendy.

It has two configurations. One keeps neutral during transport, while the other is to be more dynamic during an actual event. The other focuses more on the LED devices.

The Pioneer Pro-1400 FLT houses all possible DJ equipment including CDs, headphones, and other DJ gear.

Oh sure, the place has got a name that’d send kids snickering but Phuket’s one of top tropical destinations on the planet and here’s one additional reason why:

The Pavilions, Phuket is set to introduce private spa villas. Yup, now there’s such a thing. You can have your own private getaway villa that’s also a fully equipped spa.

The spa villas span 60 square meters and have their own separate steam/shower room and therapists use a separate side entry for the guests’ own privacy.

The place opens this November. There will be 24 new villas with 6 as swanky Plantation Pool Penthouses and 18 Plantation Pool Pavilions.

Some people would rather get wed in a classy place. Vegas is just too full of drunken and wasted people getting hitched. Some people would avoid Vegas wedding chapels like the plague and would consider crossing the Atlantic to have their special day.

Wales doesn’t usually come up as a wedding destination for some but the place does offer some really classy wedding venues like Glanusk Park. The Glanusk Estate is one of the premiere wedding venues in Britain.

The whole place is basically 400 acres of private parkland which houses various historical landmarks in the Estate such as the Penmyarth House (in which you can hold your ceremony) and the lawn overlooking the park, the River Usk, and The Tower (on which you can hold the reception).

Yup. The cost of renting out the place on top of getting people over there. Gotta pack some very serious dough.

Well known in the racing world, Panoz has only produced a handful of roadgoing sportscars. And this is the latest. Called the Abruzzi “Spirit of Le Mans”, it packs all the know-how culled from years on the Le Mans racing circuit: The 600+ horsepower engine sits low down and behind the front axle for optimal balance. The radiators are placed in the back of the car to help both balance and cooling. Oh, and Panoz developed a new composite construction material – said to be bulletproof and both stronger and lighter than carbon fiber – just for this car.

Only limited details were released at the car’s unveiling in the lead-up to this weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. No word on pricing yet, but only 81 examples will be made over the course of the next three years, and each buyer will be given professional instruction on how to handle the car at the Bugatti Le Mans track and be invited by the manufacturer and race organizer to the circuit to see the famous race live as their guest.

Two Aston Martin DB5s were used on screen for the production of the timeless 1960’s James Bond classics, Goldfinger and Thunderball. One of those two cars was reported stolen in 1997 and is believed to have been destroyed. The other is the FMP 7B, which will be auctioned off. The car features silver birch exterior paint and dark gray leather interior.

Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 and its gadgets were the brainchild of Oscar-award-winning special effects expert John Stears, also of Star Wars and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fame. The car was sold in 1969 to American Jerry Lee, who became FMP 7B’s first ex-factory and remaining owner. The car was originally purchased from the Aston Martin factory for $12,000. For a time, Lee agreed to allow Aston Martin to continue to use FMP 7B for promotional purposes in the United States. Today, the odometer shows approximately 30,000 miles, primarily from its tour usage. A careful re-commissioning program was recently undertaken by RM Auto Restoration, returning the car to running condition after its long-term static storage.

Proceeds of the sale of FMP 7B (which are anticipated to be around $5 million) will be used to further the charitable work of ‘The Jerry Lee Foundation’, a multi-national initiative dedicated to solving social problems associated with poverty, with an emphasis on crime prevention. RM Auctions is the world’s largest collector car auction house and specializes in investment-quality automobiles, holding four of the top five world record prices for motor cars sold at auction.

Wonder how much this baby will end up going for?  Well at least I can start the auction!

With a 6.2L LS9 V8 engine and 638-horsepower, you might wonder how you didn’t pay more for this fast and furious luxury car experience.

The most expensive model in the Chevrolet Corvette line, the ZR1 became a hot topic of conversation last year when it began out racing the Porsche and Ferrari in test drives. Its 638-horsepower, 6.2-liter, supercharged LS9 V-8 engine makes it one of the most powerful production cars ever constructed.

A drive inside the ZR1 and you will quickly realize this model is born and bred for the track. The sports car has tremendous acceleration, an amazing soundtrack, and incredible handling capabilities and offers a comfortable interior, not to mention a large trunk, which is often nonexistent in most sports cars.

This model also boasts a supercharged V8, 19-inch front wheels and 20-inch rear, carbon-ceramic brakes, an exclusive suspension with adaptive dampers, and additional lightweight body panels, including a carbon-fiber roof panel. For the ZR1, Chevrolet has added a Performance Traction Management system that allows drivers to select from five modes (wet, dry, sport with active handling, sport without active handling and race) designed to optimize power for specific road conditions.