As World Cup fever kicks in, malls going to any lengths to clean up

A bikini-clad model under a hot shower in Kwun Tong on Wednesday showed the lengths some shopping malls are going to attract bleary-eyed football fans during the World Cup, which starts on June 11. Owing to the six-hour time difference between South Africa and Hong Kong, most of the 30-day tournament's matches will be screened in our small hours, depriving some die-hard fans of sleep and causing others to arrive late for work in a possibly stinky, unkempt state.

But the canny apm Mall in Kwun Tong pulled back its shower curtain on a lucky draw offer that could take the strain out of many Hong Kong fans' World Cup telly campaigns. Spend HK$3,000 at the mall's shops during the four weekends of the tournament and a 'valued customer' can take up to 10 friends for a night at apm's 'hotel suite', which we hear has been specially converted from a vacant shop for the job. The draw's winners will get a king-size bed, dinner and snack, a hot shower (without the model) as well as a facial, grooming and laundry service to iron out the crinkles of life between games.

Other malls such as WTC More in Causeway Bay and Olympian City in Tai Kok Tsui are setting up big screens for the matches and lucky draws for free meals, sleeping bags and even massage sticks.

But the malls seem to have forgotten the three things that have always got Hong Kong's late-night football fans to work on time - a good old-fashioned alarm clock, a bucket of water, and the possibility of further employment with an end-of-year bonus.