Up close and personal in travel retail
I’m back in a near-freezing London after a full-on week in the Middle East, starting with the annual MEADFA Conference in Jordan, followed by the Dubai Duty Free Golf World Cup. The former was a good event as always, attracting 342 delegates – not bad given some widely held concerns about the choice of Jordan as a venue in a troubled year.
It was nice while it lasted but alas The Moodie Report’s Interim Dead Sea Bureau is now closed. What a beautiful setting, not just to run my business from but also for the (excellent) MEADFA Conference 2015. I’ve now set up shop, as it were, in Dubai. I’m staying at the Jumeirah Creekside Hotel, owned by Dubai Duty Free, hosts of the Dubai Duty Free Golf World Cup.
Meet Pauline Cheung and Shereen Lee. They’re part of one of the aviation world’s most incredible success stories, but one whose success has generally been told away from the headlines and simply by getting on with business. Lots and lots of business.
About as good a spend of £15 in an airport as I can remember… The item in question is a called ‘A Journey in Style’, written by Elizabeth Walker (with an introduction by Yasmin Le Bon). It’s a lovely pictorial book that celebrates some of the most stylish travellers, outfits and luggage to grace Heathrow’s concourses down the years plus some great on location shots from around the world.
It’s hard to find the will to write a Blog this weekend in light of the atrocities in Paris. Our thoughts are with the people of Paris and France, especially those who have lost loved ones or seen them injured. So much hatred, so much senseless loss of the innocents. In the meantime, we all
Hong Kong International remains one of my favourite airports. I love its big panoramas; its airfield views; its diverse food & drinks offer (though not always its service quality); its mix of generic and specialist retail; and its sheer sense of drama – a real feeling of a vast international crossroads. It’s pretty damn efficient
One thing we should never stop applauding in this business is ambition. I’m not talking the naked, money-lusting form but ambition in its purest form as in the desire or aspiration to achieve something, to be better. Over the past two days I have twice witnessed exactly the right sort of ambition in Singapore, firstly
I’ve dropped into Hong Kong en route to Singapore to attend one of the great events on the travel retail calendar, DFS Group’s Masters of Wines & Spirits, which opens tomorrow. Today I lunched with the dynamic, well make that effervescent, Beatrice Charreire, Global Travel Retail Director for LVMH-owned Benefit Cosmetics, a brand which has
Very occasionally, things happen in sport that transcend it. Moments that are about more than skill, teamwork, iron will or ultra-competitiveness. Moments that stand apart from the excitement, the fans’ emotions, and the whole unscripted (and often unscriptable) drama that great sport can offer. Such a moment happened on Saturday after the Rugby World Cup at
Having decided I could no longer inflict any more damage on the golf courses of Dubai at the recent Dubai Duty Free Golf World Cup, I sat out the second day. Instead I did my best David Attenborough impersonation and caught up with some local wildlife instead. Some of it, as you will see, was