Good to great with OTG but less than Admiral-able in Miami

Friday: It feels like a scene out of Groundhog Day. Suddenly I’m back at Miami International Airport, filling in a five-hour gap before my flight home to London. Straight off the 30 minute flight from Nassau (goodbye beautiful Bahamas) and there’s the same rather disappointing Bacardi Mojito bar that I saw a few days back,

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OTG crew show iron will, foodie flair and cocktail creativity

If you think the contestants on TV’s MasterChef are under pressure, you want to attend the OTG ‘Iron Chef’ competition at the airport restaurateur’s annual Business Partner Trade Show (currently on in Nassau, the Bahamas, and to which I gave the keynote address at the day one conference). Like the American television series of the same

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From a Mumbai masterpiece to a Bahamian rhapsody

There are worse views, considerably so, than the one I woke up to at The Moodie Report Interim Bureau in Nassau, the Bahamas this morning. I’m staying at The Cove Atlantis and while it’s a pretty modest 22 degrees here today, that’s a whole lot warmer than the bitter 3 degrees I left behind in

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Come in he said, I’ll give you shelter from the storm

‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form “Come in,” he said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm” – Bob Dylan, Shelter from the Storm (with a mild edit) You’ll

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A feast of the senses at a big, fat Indian wedding

They don’t come much bigger. Or much fatter. I’m talking weddings. Indian weddings. And I’m still trying to take in everything I have seen over the past three days. Firstly some context. Mumbai-based Travel Food Services is not only India’s largest airport food & beverage operator but its Chairman Sunil Kapur is also one of

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Mumbai on red alert as the world says “Je suis Charlie”

Mumbai is on alert. Terrorist alert. Mers alert. Ebola alert. But mostly, alas, the former. The signs at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport tell their own story. So does the heavy armed police presence; the exclusion of meeters & greeters from the terminal; and the barrier-studded road into the airport. Yesterday cleaning staff at the airport noticed some

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Sherlock homes in on Schiphol lost property

We closed out 2014 with the story of a real-life cat burglar, a feline fiend that ate its way through US$1,100 of gourmet fish products at Vladivostok Airport’s duty free shop – well in excess of his purrsonal allowance. Now word reaches The Moodie Blog of an equally talented animal, a beagle by the highly

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Starting all over again

Two days into 2015 and I’m in my first airport departures lounge of the year. What took me so long? Heck, there’s only 357 travel retail shopping days left to Christmas. This is my first airport experience of 2015 but I can guarantee it won’t be my last. I’m sipping on a Penfolds Koonunga Hill Autumn

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