LEIPZIG/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – A German court on Wednesday ruled in favour of a night flight ban at Frankfurt airport, Europe’s third busiest, dealing a blow to German flagship airline Lufthansa and airport operator Fraport.

Lufthansa (LHAG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which says night flights are crucial for its cargo operations and to compete with fast-growing Gulf airports, said the decision would have serious consequences for Germany as a place to do business and would result in Frankfurt airport losing out to rivals.

“This threatens to clip the wings of not only Frankfurt and (its home state of) Hesse, but the whole of Germany as an export and transport nation,” Lufthansa Chief Executive Christoph Franz said, adding he would continue to make a case for night flights.

The judge said he was banning night flights between 11pm and 5 am after the state of Hesse made mistakes in deciding to allow 17 flights during those hours without proper consultation with stakeholders when approving expansion of the airport.

The judge said the state could now make a new decision on night flights, but warned there was little room for manoeuvre. Local transport minister Dieter Posch said Hesse said the state would implement the ban “100 percent” and not push for night flights.

The ruling hurt shares in Lufthansa and Fraport (FRAG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), with Lufthansa down 4.2 percent at 1103 GMT, while Fraport was down 2.3 percent.

Along with a total ban from 11 pm to 5 am, the Leipzig court also reduced the number of flights permitted in the period covering the so-called shoulder hours from 10 pm to 6 am to 133 from 150 in a case brought by local residents over the noise from the airport.

DUESSELDORF, Germany, March 20 (Reuters) – German group Metro, the world’s fourth-largest retailer, forecast flat profit this year due to a stuttering global economy and costs from expanding its cash-and-carry and consumer electricals stores businesses.

Metro, which also runs hypermarkets and department stores, said on Tuesday it would be 2013 before investors could expect an increase in profit, as it reported a 1.8 percent decline in 2011 earnings before interest, tax and special items (adjusted EBIT) to 2.37 billion euros ($3.1 billion).

Metro, forced to scrap its profit target in 2011 as the global economy worsened, said sales should grow in 2012 but cautioned the outlook included an element of risk as high unemployment and austerity programmes in Europe weigh on consumer spending.

“2011 was not too pleasing and we can’t hope that 2012 will be any better,” Chief Executive Olaf Koch told reporters.

Analysts on average forecast Metro’s adjusted EBIT to fall to 2.35 billion euros in 2012 and sales to rise to 67.1 billion from 66.7 billion, according to a Reuters poll.

Retail sales in Germany, Europe’s strongest economy, fell unexpectedly in January, as mild weather stifled spending. European retail sales on the other hand, showed shoppers in the Euro zone increased spending, although economists cautioned the three-month trend still showed a contraction.

Metro, which operates almost 2,200 stores in 33 countries, gets almost 39 percent of its total sales from Germany, with a further 31.3 percent coming from western Europe.

BASEL, Switzerland (Reuters) – Feathers, unscratchable gold, bamboo and even straw. Adorning watches with regular gold and silver is rather boring these days, as designs at the 2012 Baselworld watch fair showed.

Displays sparkling with the usual gold, diamonds and other precious gems, watchmakers were also keen to show their expertise by designing and working with new materials.

Harry Winston worked with plumassiere Nelly Saunier to unveil four elegant watches that used peacock and pheasant feathers arranged in intricate geometric patterns on the dial.

“In some civilizations, feathers had a similar value and meaning to diamonds,” Frederic de Narp, president and CEO of the jeweler and watchmaker, told Reuters at the fair.

Gucci Timepieces went back to nature and its famous bamboo-handled bag for inspiration, presenting watches with elegant round faces, bamboo inlaid around the bezel and on the bracelet.

Continuing the natural materials theme, Patek Philippe used wood marquetry, while the watch division of Hermes recreated two of its famous check and chevron tie prints using straw marquetry in watches costing around 150,000 Swiss francs ($161,100).

For those who don’t wrap their Swiss-made watch in cotton wool, manufacturers have come up with tougher materials, such as unscratchable gold at Hublot and aerospace-engineered zalium at Harry Winston.

BASEL, Switzerland, March 14 (Reuters) – Traditionally dominated by timepieces for men looking to show off their status with a Rolex or Omega, the $21 billion Swiss watchmaking industry is starting to design intricate watch movements for the neglected female market.

Until recently, the women’s market was mostly focused on simple quartz watches for under 1,000 Swiss francs ($1,100) or luxury diamond-encrusted pieces with mind-blowing price tags.

But Swiss watchmakers at the Baselworld fair said they were now taking pains to design new collections of mechanical watches for women, especially as they will often buy more pieces than men as fashion changes, making them a lucrative customer base.

Tag Heuer, aiming for sales of around 1 billion Swiss francs this year, said it hopes to increase the proportion of its sales accounted for by women’s watches to 40 percent from 30 percent.

Chief Executive Jean-Christophe Babin said there was little competition in the 1,000-10,000 Swiss francs price range.

“There is a lot of potential,” Babin told Reuters at the fair. “In a lifetime, if you can sell two or three luxury watches to a man, you can sell between five and ten for a lady.”

La Montre Hermes, part of handbag maker Hermes, said women were increasingly interested in mechanical watches – which are driven by a spring as opposed to electronically — but appreciated them for different reasons to men.

BASEL, Switzerland, March 13 (Reuters) – Watch companies are having to move fast to build in-house production or alliances with Swiss makers of movements, dials and cases to replace supplies being cut by Swatch Group and to satisfy rising demand, experts said at an industry fair.

Specialist suppliers are being snapped up by larger players, leaving smaller independent watch companies with fewer options as Swatch, the world’s largest watchmaker and for decades the main supplier of movements to the industry, cuts deliveries to focus on its own brands.

The move has triggered a flurry of activity, with Tokyo-based Citizen buying the parent of Swiss movement maker La Joux-Perret for about 5.8 billion yen ($70 million), while luxury goods group PPR last year took control of Sowind Group.

La Montre Hermes, the watchmaking division of the French handbag maker, announced last week it was in talks to buy Swiss high-end dial maker Nateber, just months after snapping up almost a third of family-owned watch case maker Joseph Erard.

“There’s a definite trend for concentration,” Luc Perramond, chief executive of La Montre Hermes, told Reuters at the Baselworld watch fair.

“You’re seeing fewer and fewer independents and the opportunities to work with specialists are becoming rarer.”

Independent watchmakers are the most under pressure from the Swatch Group delivery cuts, having fewer resources to invest in their own production or to buy up the factories they need.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Massages, steam baths and a rest from an increasingly busy lifestyle are drawing a growing number of Germans to spa breaks, one of the tourism sector’s fastest-growing segments.

Tour operators boast above-average growth in spa holiday bookings and see no end to demand as Germans, the world’s biggest spenders on holidays, add more short “wellness” trips close to home to their annual vacation schedule.

“After the crisis of 2008/2009 we saw that wellness picked up again,” Matthias Hartmann, chief executive of German market researcher GfK told Reuters at the ITB Berlin travel fair, adding bookings for spa breaks were currently up 7 percent.

The German arm of TUI Travel (TUIGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)(TT.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Europe’s biggest tour operator, expects more than 5 million Germans to book spa trips this year, spending more than 1 billion euros.

Mostly couples book spa breaks, and the bulk of weekend packages are tailored to twosomes looking to spend quality time together, including side-by-side massages, sparkling wine in oversized bathtubs and candle-lit dinners.

“It’s definitely about ‘me-time’,” Catrin Stoppa, in charge of Thomas Cook Germany’s (TCG.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Wellness & More catalogue, told Reuters.

“Day-to-day life is becoming more and more stressful and fast-paced. And it’s also about health, that people say, I can’t keep going like this, I need a break.”

BERLIN, March 9 (Reuters) – With a weak western European economy, fear of political unrest in North Africa and a cruise business hit by the Costa Concordia disaster, travel groups are looking to eastern Europe, China and corporate travel to brighten up 2012.

The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) expects global arrivals of international travellers to increase by 3-4 percent this year, after a 4.4 percent increase to 980 million in 2011, with growth driven by emerging markets.

“The whole world is skewed to the East. This is the New World,” Taleb Rifai, secretary general of the UNWTO told Reuters in an interview at the ITB Berlin travel fair.

Officials from the tourism ministries of Tunisia and Egypt, which are struggling to encourage tourists back after uprisings, said Russian tourists were now the leading visitors to their countries, and that they were keen to attract Asian travellers.

China is expected to account for 100 million arrivals by 2020 as the country’s booming economy translates into corporate investments outside China and into rising wealth for the broader population, according to the UNWTO.

German travel group TUI AG, the owner of Europe’s largest tour operator TUI Travel, will bring its first groups of Chinese tourists to Europe in the summer on a package tour of Europe’s cities.

“We’re calling it the tour of the Museum of Europe,” CEO Michael Frenzel said, highlighting that TUI is the only European tour operator to have a licence to organise international travel for China.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Cruise bookings for next year could remain slow until the industry manages to dispel safety concerns after the Costa Concordia capsized off the west coast of Italy in January.

Cruise bookings tumbled after the Costa Concordia struck a rock near the Isola del Giglio and grounded on her side, killing at least 25 people and raising questions about the safety of the luxury cruise ship industry.

A further Costa Cruises ship was left stranded in a pirate-infested stretch of the Indian Ocean after a power failure last week, adding to woes for the company, a unit of Carnival Corp (CCL.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)(CCL.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

And while most industry players voiced optimism, saying the cruise industry would continue to grow in the long term, the full impact of the disaster will only become apparent in the coming weeks and months as cruises for 2013 go on sale.

TUI Cruises, a joint venture of Germany’s TUI AG (TUIGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Royal Caribbean, started selling trips for the summer of 2013 and the winter of 2013/14 on March 1, and the bulk of its capacity for the current season was already sold when the disaster happened.

“We cannot yet say whether customer behavior will change in the new season,” a spokeswoman for TUI Cruises told Reuters.

Industry insiders say the incident is probably having more of an effect on those who haven’t been on a cruise before, though there are no statistics to back this up at present.

BERLIN, March 8 (Reuters) – Egypt and Tunisia are unlikely to see tourism – a vital prop for their battered economies – revive anytime soon as holidaymakers continue to shun North African destinations a year after the “Arab Spring” revolutions.

Bookings to the two countries collapsed last year after popular uprisings across the Arab world toppled veteran rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and forced Yemen’s president to sign away his powers.

“Developments in the Middle East and North Africa are very difficult to predict at this time,” Taleb Rifai, secretary-general of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), told Reuters at the ITB Berlin travel fair.

“The situation in Syria is still unfolding from bad to worse. The situation in Yemen is very unclear. And the Arab Spring is not limited to any one particular country. Uncertainty is the name of the game now for the immediate future.”

Tour operators and governments had expected tourism to bounce back, but that has proved not to be the case, with many holidaymakers preferring instead to seek winter sun in the Canary Islands, the Caribbean or the Maldives.

“We understand that (challenge) perfectly. We have to reassure them that Tunisia is safe,” the country’s tourism minister Elyes Fakhfakh told Reuters on the sidelines of the Berlin conference.

The number of international tourists arriving in North African destinations dropped by 12 percent to 16.4 million last year, and the Middle East saw visitor numbers decline by 8 percent to 55.4 million, according to UNWTO data.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German consumer goods group Henkel (HNKG_p.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) stuck to its 2012 margin target despite posting quarterly results at the low end of market expectations, hurt by a slowdown in its adhesives business in Asia.

Henkel, whose consumer brands include Persil detergent in most of Europe and Schwarzkopf hair products, said on Thursday fourth-quarter adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) rose 12.3 percent year-on-year to 502 million euros ($658.7 million), compared with a forecast for 516 million.

Chief Executive Kasper Rorsted said the situation in Asia was temporary and that it would not affect the group’s target for to reach an adjusted EBIT margin of 14 percent in 2012.

“We have no indication or intention of changing direction,” Chief Executive Kasper Rorsted told analysts, seeking to reassure them the group would achieve a target that investors see as over-optimistic given poor global economic growth rates.

Henkel, whose industrial adhesives are used in the electronics and auto industries, said it had been hurt in China as customers used up stock levels and in Thailand, where flooding affected car production.

Emerging markets currently account for 47 percent of its adhesives business, which had been growing strongly. Organic sales at its adhesives unit slowed to 4.2 percent in the fourth quarter from 8.7 in the previous quarter.

“We do expect China to come back in 2012. Even the government’s reduced growth forecast of 7.5 percent is in line with our expectations,” Rorsted told analysts.