You can picture the scene. The Moodie Report has once again established a temporary foreign bureau – this time on the 5th floor of the Leela Kempinski hotel in Gurgaon, just outside New Delhi. I’ve set up office to produce our weekly edition of The Moodie Report 7 Days before I fly home after attending
Blog
Events
DFNI Charity Ball chooses a good cause
Each year for the past decade and a half the DFNI Charity Ball in London has chosen and helped a very good cause. Down the years the event has raised very large sums for a numer of excellent and often unsung charities. This year’s beneficiary is N/a’an ku sê Lifeline Clinic in Namibia. It was
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Airports
‘The media is no longer on it – Haiti needs us’
[Picture: Nancy Roc] Sometimes comment is unnecessary. This Blog will be one of my shortest. Last night I received a note from Alexandra Bottrie, wife of The Estée Lauder Companies Travel Retailing Worldwide President Olivier Bottrie. Alexandra is from Haiti. Though her family are safe and well after the catastrophic earthquake of January 12, she has
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Miscellaneous
Rugby fans show support for Hand in Hand for Haiti
In rugby terms, there wasn’t much to celebrate on Saturday for anyone wearing red, as England scrabbled to a lucky, last-gasp win over an injury-depleted Wales at Twickenham. Scorpio Distributors Group Managing Director Stuart McGuire generously hosted a fabulous day (exception: the result) for assorted industry colleagues, and this journalist was lucky enough to be
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People
Terminal rudeness at T5 as Phil goes down with trolley fever
It’s early morning at London Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 and it’s a pleasure to step out of the confines of my nine-hour flight from Delhi into the modern spaciousness of London’s flagship terminal. I find a trolley easily and head down towards my well-signed baggage belt. It’s a relief to put my bulging, overloaded briefcase
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Airports
Out with the old and in with the new at Delhi airport
Indira Gandhi International Airport at 2p.m in the morning is a fascinating place. There’s good, bad and (very) indifferent here, underling the challenge facing GMR and Delhi International Airport Group in creating a world-class airport at the new Terminal 3, slated to open in June. Airports are not just about infrastructure or facilities. The customer
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Events
Prepare to enter India’s Kingdom of Dreams
Delhi’s new Terminal 3 is not the only spectacular tourism-related infrastructure development due to open in Delhi in the near future. So is Kingdom of Dreams (http://kingdomofdreams.co.in), possibly the most dazzling tourism attraction I have ever seen – and that’s an assessment made while the facility is still a construction site. When it opens next
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Airports
Meet Supersonic Suredj
“He’s an ebullient, live-wire, irrepressible character who knows only one speed – supersonic.” In my role as Chairman of the first day of the Delhi Terminal 3 concessionaires’ conference held by Delhi International Airport and GMR this week, that’s how I introduced GMR Chief Commercial Officer and Head of Strategic Planning Suredj Autar (below). The name
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Miscellaneous
Building an upscale reputation
Geneva-based Caran d’Ache has long enjoyed a reputation for producing high-quality pencils, artists’ materials and office products, and its airport and airline business largely reflects those traditions. But the company is also one of Switzerland’s key luxury writing instruments manufacturers, and it is this heritage that the company is now showcasing with confidence and style
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Airports
Destination Delhi as T3 opening looms
The Moodie Report is in Delhi, where we’ll be helping to chair a GMR conference on the exciting new Terminal 3 at Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport which opens in a few months, in plenty of time for September’s Commonwealth Games. First I had to fly out of another T3 – at London Heathrow. I
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Miscellaneous
Joining the Twittering classes
[Picture: Samira Moodie] It’s official, I am now a Twitterer. In fact I’ve been Tweeting for the past two days. Please, save those unkind comments. For so are all my colleagues at The Moodie Report. In fact our Irish Deputy Publisher Dermot Davitt did his first Tweet yesterday and they’re already talking about it, maybe
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People
Martha returns to Europe
What an astute move by The Nuance Group Europe CEO Andrea Belardini to bring in Martha Rosas as European Category Director – Speciality. Martha is held not only in great regard in the business with with great fondness. That’s because she is an outstandingly decent individual who has brought great human as well as commercial qualities
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Airports
Louis Vuitton booms at Lotte Duty Free
It’s a Tuesday afternoon at Lotte Duty Free’s flagship downtown store in Seoul on a bitterly cold winter’s day. That’s hardly peak time for the country’s leading duty free operation, yet young, fashionable, acutely brand-conscious young Japanese and Korean women are queued down the aisle to enter Lotte’s Louis Vuitton boutique. “You want to see it