No I’m not in New York, I’m at London Heathrow Airport Terminal 5, my second home. At the (very real) risk of dumbing down one of the world’s great landmarks, Heathrow Airport has created the ‘Statue of Liperty’ , a two-storey replica of the famous New York monument made of lipstick. It’s designed to celebrate
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Miscellaneous
Giving Ollie a leg up; freewheeling for Fraser
News reaches The Moodie Blog of a couple of charity initiatives that honour two very different individuals, one a brave boy who is going through the battle of his young life; the second a well-known industry executive tragically no longer with us. I have written previously about Ollie, the 9 year-old nephew of Sara Stevens
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Miscellaneous
A tale of two cities… and the epoch of incredulity
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it
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Miscellaneous
Flying Foxes defy gravity by staying up
What an appropriate moment to post this Blog from Suvarnabhumi, ‘the airport of smiles’, on a holiday weekend in the UK that witnessed a sporting triumph for (and plenty of smiles from) the airport’s master commercial concessionaire King Power International Group. Yesterday, UK football team Leicester City Football Club, owned by an offshoot of King Power
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Miscellaneous
From Singapore to Singha pour
This comes to you from The Moodie Report’s interim Phuket bureau. I’m here to help an old (well he’s my age so that truly counts as old) Kiwi friend with his excellent new online Phuket tourism guide, What’s On-Phuket (http://www.on-phuket.com/) while clearing my head from the stresses of recent months and planning the next stage of
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DFS conveys a sense of wonder at Changi Airport
Talk about the perfect way to raise your average transaction value… Meet Jenny Tan of DFS Group, who earlier this week sold a DFS-exclusive range of 28 vintages of Château Mouton Rothschild, the great First Growth Bordeaux, to a single passenger. Expect Jenny to make many more spectacular sales. For that First Growth offer is
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Miscellaneous
Will the real Morgan Freeman please stand up?
Ok, it’s official, Jaya Singh is Morgan Freeman. Close your eyes while the APTRA President and Mondelez World Travel Retail Regional Director is speaking on stage and I swear you will hear what sounds for all the world like the dulcet tones of the American star of Along Came a Spider, Now you see me,
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Miscellaneous
Bringing it all back home
Welcome to The Moodie Report’s Interim Singapore Bureau, 47 floors up at the Marina Bay Sands. I, like many members of the travel retail community, am in Singapore for TFWA Asia Pacific, arguably the most vibrant event on the travel retail calendar. It’s nice to be on the move again having been grounded by a
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Miscellaneous
Fraser Dunlop: Inspiration, jester and miracle man
Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” –Viktor Frankl (neurologist, psychiatrist and concentration camp survivor) , So now you know the story I mentioned a couple of weeks back
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Tequila’s new Mexican wave crests in travel retail
“One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.” “Tequila: a Spanish word meaning ‘I don’t remember doing that…’” What do you think of when you hear the word ‘tequila’? Shots? Slammers? Seriously debilitating hangovers? If so, time to reconsider a) how you think and b) how you drink, because at the top end at least, tequila
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Swans culled by the fantastic Mr Foxes
Foxes never quit. At least not when they’re Leicester City Football Club foxes. As regular readers will know, Leicester City (known fondly by their fans as the Foxes) is an English premiership football club owned by an offshoot of Thai travel retailer King Power International (Group Chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha is the club’s Chairman and Senior Executive
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Miscellaneous
Oh what can ail thee, knight at arms? Farewell to a fallen friend
To a fallen companion. La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats. I Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing. II Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
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Miscellaneous
Farewell to the housewives’ favourite
There are two stories I did not want to write this year. The second (completely unrelated to this one) will come after next Monday. Many readers know what I am talking about. But, alas, write them I must. For now, let me deal only with the first. Today we announced the forthcoming departure of Deputy Chairman