It’s just over two months since the opening of London Heathrow Terminal 2 : The Queen’s Terminal, and the transition continues for many of the carriers that will eventually use the new facility. The stores and restaurants at T2 won’t reach their full trading potential probably until 2015, as airline capacity builds and as passengers
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Miscellaneous
Death of a journalist: 100 years on, does mankind ever learn?
To what God shall we chant our songs of battle? Oh, to whom shall a song of battle be chanted? Not to our lord of the hosts on his ancient throne Drowsing the ages out in Heaven alone. The celestial choirs are mute, the angels have fled Word is gone forth abroad that our lord
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Miscellaneous
New Zealand and Australia play out an exciting draw
Last Saturday the All Blacks and the Wallabies (for the uninitiated, the national rugby teams of New Zealand and Australia) played out a nail-biting 12-12 draw in Sydney, in conditions straight out of the bleakest mid-winter scenes of ‘March of the Penguins’. In pulling off the draw, the (delete expletives here) Aussies stopped the All
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Miscellaneous
Dubai Duty Free shapes new venture on the hoof
Is it a horse? A camel? A Dubai Duty Free-sponsored hybrid? No it’s the world’s first-ever ‘human racehorse’, conceived to celebrate the world’s premier international jockeys’ competition, today’s Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup at Ascot Racecourse near London. The giant horse (pictured ‘ridden’ by German jockey Steffi Hofer passing the Ascot winning post) is composed of ten
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Miscellaneous
Mighty Irish too good for New Zealand in rugby classic
I have been challenged by several Irish travel retail executives to write this story, and write it I shall… Above is the headline many Irish men and women thought they would never read. It’s certainly one that Irish friends of mine in travel retail thought I’d never write. I had, after all, regaled all who wanted
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Miscellaneous
Catching carabao, Seoul searching, and sleeping with blue angels
[MM with store designer/planner Alex Cook (right) and an unnamed carabao (centre, though you probably realised that)] Sometimes you’ve just got to take the bull (or in this case the water buffalo, called a carabao in Guam) by the horns. I’m back in London following a whistlestop visit to Guam and South Korea. But brevity does
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Miscellaneous
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
“Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused – in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened – by the recurrence of Christmas.” Charles Dickens Reader, I am that Mann. Christmas just doesn’t do it for me. I basically don’t have the
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Miscellaneous
Pure Pacific beauty in glorious Guam
Hafa Adai from Guam. Now this is what I call a room with a view. I’m staying at the newly opened Lotte Hotel Guam overlooking the bluest, most transparent sea you ever saw. This is the Pacific at its purest. A perfect, pristine scene. It’s a busy work day for me on our weekly e-Zine so
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Miscellaneous
Moving on down to the Marianas
I’m posting this Blog from Incheon International Airport just before I jump on my Korean Air flight to Guam. South Korea is known as the Land of the Morning Calm, but there’s probably not too much calmness here among the Lotte Duty Free team as they prepare for one of their most significant store openings
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Miscellaneous
On century duty with Cataláns and Catamarans
I told you in my last Blog that I’d be all at sea today. I meant it literally. I was due to join Puig senior management and some of the company’s key retailers onboard one of several racing yachts commissioned by the company to coincide with the Vela Classica, a sailing boat race organised by
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Miscellaneous
Waiting for Godello and Delicioso from Galicia
I’m writing from the (very) interim Moodie Report Bureau in Madrid at the delightful Hotel Palacio del Retiro (don’t you just love the mural outside my window? I promise you it’s not an overly inquisitive local.). My Spanish is lousy but the hotel name kind of sounds like (but isn’t) ‘the palatial hotel where I shall retire’,
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Miscellaneous
Adding some more bite to Paul & Shark in travel retail
This Blog comes to you after a brilliant couple of days in Varese, near Milan. I was there to get the know the compelling family story (and values) of one of Italy’s most distinguished luxury fashion names, Paul & Shark. The invitation came from Catherine Bonelli (above), the house’s new Global Travel Retail Director. There aren’t many
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Miscellaneous
Hitting heady heights at Hamad International
This Blog begins about 50 minutes out of Doha just off the coast of Kuwait. Beneath me the perfect blue waters of the Persian Gulf sparkle like immaculately polished gemstones. I’m onboard a Qatar Airways flight way home to London after a whistle-stop visit to the Qatari capital and, more pertinently, the new Hamad International