A smile that lights up Hyderabad

The little boy looks shyly at the ground as his mother is asked to introduce him to me. He is six years old, with beautiful, big brown eyes.   His name is Anji and tomorrow he will face a defining moment in his life – he will undergo surgery to repair the cleft lip and palate

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The Moodie BLOG in India: Part 7 – Hitting new heights in Bangalore

Indian aviation is constantly hitting new heights and smashing growth records. A ground-to-air revolution is being played out here and everyone wants a part of the action. The Times of India today described it as ‘zoom power’, and revealed that over 100 new airports are to be built in the country in so-called ‘tier-2’ cities (which

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The Moodie BLOG in India: Part 6 – “There’s nothing as exciting as this”

Everywhere you go in this pulsating country the growth curves, whether economic indicators or passenger traffic increases, never cease to amaze. Indira Gandhi International Airport, a public private partnership initiative between GMR Group, Airports Authority of India, Fraport, Eraman Malaysia and India Development Fund, is a dramatic case in point. Delhi is already India’s second-busiest airport, handling

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The Moodie BLOG in India: Part 5 – Mall mania

The mall and hypermarket signs are everywhere – MGF Mega City, Spencer’s, Grand Mall, The Metropolitan, City Centre. Within a few minutes walk of my hotel in Gurgaon just outside Delhi, there’s a frenzy of retail activity.‘Mall mania’ has hit India and wherever you look there are huge advertising signs promoting the latest opening or

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The Moodie BLOG in India: Part 4 – Smoke rings over Delhi

The taste of Indian consumers is moving inexorably upmarket, almost by the day. As noted in an earlier BLOG, Alpha Future says high-end malt whiskies and Montblanc writing instruments are selling out as fast as they can be stocked at Delhi International Airport. The same phenomenon can be seen in the shopping malls and upmarket bars

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The Moodie BLOG in India: Part 3 – Mr Dryburgh I presume?

Delhi is a big place. I mean really big. Conservative estimates put the population at well over 13 million, a figure that is soaring each year. So the chances of a visitor to the city bumping into anyone they knew is distant – about one in, say, 13 million… But that’s exactly what happened during The Moodie

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The Moodie BLOG in India: Part 1 – Delhi

The Moodie Report – and The Moodie BLOG – have arrived in India. Over the next few days we’re making a whistlestop tour of some of this big, vibrant country’s most exciting airport developments. We’ll be taking in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad in our research for the forthcoming BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) issue

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Style icon unmasked…

Thanks to everyone who entered our ‘Best foot forward’ competition, inspired by the trend-setting footwear borne by one of travel retail’s true style icons. No, it wasn’t (as some of you guessed) Randy Emch, nor was it Blog sponsor Stuart Bull, although we think both qualify as industry icons of fashion in their own right.

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Farewell to ‘Big Mo’

The warmth of the tributes that have flowed into The Moodie Report office since we announced the forthcoming departure from Abu Dhabi Duty Free – and from the industry – of Mohamed Mounib said it all. Here is a man of stature in every sense. Tall and imposing, the long-time Managing Director of Abu Dhabi

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