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
Airports
Jeju’s thriving Korean travel retail outpost
It’s been a long day. This morning I set off from my hotel at 7.30a.m to Gimpo Airport in Seoul to take an early flight to Jeju – the holiday island off the south of the Korean peninsula. Jeju is the home of a thriving duty free sector – both traditional duty free and also
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Airports
Leaving on a jet plane – from Heathrow Terminal 4
Airport: London Heathrow Terminal 4 Date: 16 January 2010 Destination: Incheon, South Korea Airline: Korean Air Flight time: 20.10 My arrival time at the airport: 18.05 The Moodie Report is on the road again – this time to the South Korean capital of Seoul, entering via the country’s main gateway Incheon International Airport. I flew
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Airports
Changi Terminal 3 – a traveller’s haven
Every time The Moodie Blog visits an airport (incognito) during 2010 we’ll try to record our impressions from a consumer’s (rather than journalist’s) perspective. Our first stop for the New Year – and the new decade – was Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 3. Is there a better, more consumer-friendly terminal in the world than this
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Airports
Dubai Duty Free defies the downturn
‘Dubai Duty Free hits record sales high in 2009’ – it’s a headline that many readers would have considered inconceivable earlier this year as the world’s leading travel retail operation experienced an unprecedented series of year-on-year monthly sales declines. Hit by a triple whammy of global recession, an ailing and debt-burdened local economy and the
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Airports
Nonsense and Sensibility
And so to my final Blog of the year – and the decade. 2009 closes out with duty free once again finding itself among headlines of the unwelcome kind. In the wake of the failed terrorist attack on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, the union representing German police officers
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Airlines
Kneejerk reactions and a Keystone Cops approach to terrorism
No-one doubts the seriousness of the attempted terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines flight 253, bound from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, on Christmas Day. No-one doubts the need for enhanced, hopefully temporarily, security measures at airports – especially those in, or serving, the US. But if recent history should have taught us one
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Airports
Crazy queue at SQ
Some 50 minutes after entering the relatively short check-in queue for Singapore Airlines flight SQ 317 from London Heathrow Airport Terminal 3 to Singapore Changi Airport, I neared the front of the line. Finally, exasperated like all my fellow passengers, I spotted an airline staff member at the front of the line. “Could you tell
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Airports
Damian’s delights bring Simply Chocolate to life
Meet Damian Allsop. A pastry chef by trade, Damian is now one of the hottest names in the chocolate-making world – and he’s just arrived in travel retail… His exquisite – and as a chocolate aficionado I don’t use the term lightly – creations are unlike any chocolate you have ever tasted. That’s because of
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Airports
In whisky heaven
It’s not often (I promise) that I drink 30 year old single malt whisky in the morning. But today was different. Today I died and went to whisky heaven. Actually, make that whisky haven, for that indeed is what the new-look World of Whiskies at London Heathrow Airport Terminal 4 is. It’s experiences like this that
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Airports
Countdown to opening in Cyprus
The Moodie Report is in Cyprus, having flown to the island for the official inauguration of the New Zenon Terminal in Larnaka on Saturday. This is a major event here – in fact it’s the biggest European airport opening of 2009. The new facility includes 5,000sq m of retail space, all run by CTC-ARI Airports. ARI Director
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Airlines
A taste for the finer things in life (and Switzerland)
Another day, another early start. Another visit to my second home, London Heathrow Airport. I’m on my way to Zürich, Switzerland to see a much talked-about ‘Trinity’-style ‘Taste of Switzerland’ promotion involving airport, brands and retailer. Cursed with a head cold that half of the delegates to the Cannes show seem to have returned with, London’s
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Airports
Trackside to airside at Changi
What better way to wind down from the stresses – and they are considerable – of organising and moderating The Trinity Forum than a weekend of Formula 1 racing? The Moodie Report, along with half the Asia Pacific travel retail industry it seemed, headed for Singapore over the weekend to watch the Singapore Grand Prix.