This Blog comes to you from The Moodie Report’s Interim San Francisco Bureau, at the quite wonderful Kensington Park hotel on Post Street. The Kensington Park is part of a group called Personality Hotels, a collection of boutique properties in San Francisco and the Bay Area. And you know what? It’s just… lovely. My long-suffering assistant
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Miscellaneous
Remembering that even golden eggs can crack
Welcome to The Moodie Report’s interim Honolulu Bureau at The New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel. I arrived from Seoul via Hawaiian Airlines on Friday after the most hectic of weeks I can recall in a long time, a week packed from early in the morning till late at night with breakfast meetings, lunches, dinners, after-dinner
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Miscellaneous
Hitting new heights in Seoul at Lotte World Tower
“Are you afraid of heights?” Lotte Duty Free’s delightful Communication Team Senior Assistant Sunju Park (above right) asked me with a smile as wide as the Hangang river as we clambered into the steel cage lift. “No, I’m fine,” I lied, deciding that any mention of the fact that I get vertigo from standing on a
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Miscellaneous
Lunch with a great leader of Shilla, Samsung and Korean duty free
Lunch with Jeong-Ho (‘Jason’) Cha is always an enjoyable and enlightening experience. As Senior Executive Vice President and Head of The Shilla Duty Free, Mr Cha is one of the most influential figures in Korean travel retail, with a keen insight not only into this sector but business in general, born out of his 35 years
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Championing the art of airports
To truly soar, one must first unfurl – Marie Boyle, Artist I’ve arrived in South Korea, which as I write (Saturday afternoon), is any minute due to come under attack from North Korea for alleged anti-Pyongyang propaganda on the border between the two long-divided countries. The North has threatened to launch “a strong military action” if
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The nose have it as South Korea sniffs an opportunity to recapture lost tourism business
My face has been tucked in more times than a bedsheet at the Holiday Inn – Joan Rivers South Korea has long been known as Asia’s plastic surgery capital – home to over 4,000 clinics and reportedly having the world’s highest rate of cosmetic procedures per… er… head of population. Reuters reckons 13 in every 1,000
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A tale of three amigos – and three cheaters
Here’s a death-defying story. A story of three men. Of three cheats. And of three reasons to celebrate life. Lunch this week at the unassuming Bizzarro Italian restaurant in Paddington with Stuart Bull and Martyn Westbury did not, it must be said, involve the kind of portions it might have had a few years back. For each
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Miscellaneous
A Paul Smith Mini to match my socks
Type in ‘Paul Smith mini’ to Google and you’ll get 72,600,000 results. Maybe after this Blog 72,600,001. To clarify from the outset, we’re not talking very short skirts here. The English fashion designer memorably collaborated with the famous British car brand Mini (then owned by Rover) in the 1990s, Smith coming up with two limited-edition
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Deep sea diving for some of the world’s great wines
You’ve heard of underground cellaring for wine, but never underwater, right? Wrong. Meet Irina Wiedemann. She is fronting an extraordinary project that blends outstanding wine with a dash of Daniel Defoe and an amazing cellaring concept. Irina, whom I met at June’s ASUTIL conference in Panama, is coordinating the limited edition launch of Crusoe Treasure (http://www.underwaterwine.com).
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How Adda plans to unite the seven continents
In an industry full of human dynamos, I doubt any are quite as supercharged as my lunchtime companion of today, Adda Rodríguez. Till last month, Adda was Area Manager South America for Heinemann Americas, a position she took on after a highly successful stint with the outstanding Miami-based fragrances & cosmetics distributor Essence Corp as Area Manager
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Saluting Sophist-ication at Rhodes Diagoras Airport
Diagoras, a 5th century BC poet and sophist, was also a famed Greek atheist. But the airport that bears his name, Rhodes International Diagoras, shows no lack of belief when it comes to retail, while the outstanding way it has championed local products might even have inspired him to pen a verse or two. In a
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Disspelling the wrong kind of Greek myths
Greetings from The Moodie Report’s interim Greek bureau. Actually make that bureaux, as I have been island hopping from Rhodes to Halki (or Chalki, pictured above) to Symi and back to Rhodes over the past 10 days. And actually, also put a question mark after the ‘interim’ as this country is so warm, welcoming and…
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A new face for destination retailing in Warsaw
Premium Food Gate: The clunky name doesn’t give much away but that makes a visit to this superb destination store at Warsaw Chopin Airport all the more surprising. I was in Poland last week for the unveiling of Lagardère Travel Retail’s new commercial operations – straddling duty free & luxury, news & convenience (which the