If ever a picture told a story of a country in change it is this one. The scene is Bengaluru Airport near Bangalore, the new greenfield airport opened in late May. The facility, with its impressive emphasis on efficiency rather than glitz, is very much a new airport for a new India. That new India
Airports
The Moodie Blog in India: DFS makes its Indian debut
This is my last Blog from India – written in the Clipper Lounge at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, just yards away from the new DFS Group duty free store at the airport. It has not been an easy debut for the industry leader. Initially it was the second-highest bidder in the duty free tender behind the ill-fated
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Airports
The Moodie Blog in India – A Scotsman in Delhi
Gavin McKechnie has seen plenty of challenges during a long career in retail and other customer-facing sectors that began many years ago as a management trainee at McDonald’s (“I still say I learned more there in ten months in terms of people management than I’ve ever learned since”). But he’s never seen anything like the opportunity
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Airports
The Moodie Blog in India: Day 4 and 5 – High hopes in Hyderabad are delivered
A year ago, during my last visit to India, Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad looked like this… And this… And there – being helpfully pointed out by yours truly – were the duty free shops, or at least their work in progress… It was a construction site. An ambitious, well-advanced construction site, to be fair, but
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Airports
The Moodie Blog in India: Day 2 – How commercial aspirations came true in Cochin
Cochin Duty Free may just be one of the most under-rated success stories in the global travel retail business. And Cochin International Airport (pictured above) surely deserves more exposure too for its impressive championing of the Sense of Place concept and its unrelenting commitment to corporate social responsibility. Those are just some of our impressions
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Airports
The Moodie Blog in India – Day 1: Cochin
The Moodie Report – and, of course, The Moodie Blog – are back in India, beginning a five-day whistlestop tour of this amazing country. Tonight I arrived via Singapore to Cochin International Airport, gateway to beautiful Kerala and home to Alpha Kreol, India’s longest-running duty free success story. Despite the late hour (well after 10p.m)
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Airports
Aussie rules – ok?
What a great looking shop the new Nuance-operated Arrivals store at Melbourne Airport appears to be. And it’s nice to see the efforts the retailer, fully supported by a progressive and commercially minded airport company, was making on opening day to really engage the travelling consumer. Returning nationals are generally in a hurry to clear immigration, get their baggage and get home.
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Airports
Proving that partnership can prosper
Virtually unannounced, one of travel retail’s most successful and enduring partnerships celebrated its 10th anniversary this week. The partners were The Nuance Group and A.S. Watson, which, on 7 July, marked a decade of combined achievement at Hong Kong International Airport. The reason for the lack of overt celebration wasn’t any shyness – it’s just that
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Airports
Travel retail no longer such a Lonely Planet
Sometimes an idea comes along that is so good that one is tempted to ask why no-one thought of it earlier. Sometimes a retail concept comes along that has ‘winner’ emblazoned all over it. Both propositions apply in the case of a new partnership between travel retailer Lagardère Services Asia Pacific and Lonely Planet, the
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Airports
When Dubai came to Dublin
Passengers arriving at Dublin Airport last weekend may have been forgiven for thinking they had landed at the wrong airport. For there to greet visitors in the arrivals hall of the Emerald Isle’s main gateway was a signage blitz for Dubai Duty Free, the famed travel retailer from the Middle East. A closer look of course
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Airports
German company on the ball with Russian media
At the opening of Russian travel retailer RegStaer’s impressive new duty free store at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport this week, the company’s Chairman Alexander Baev was joined at a press conference for Russian media by Pierre Viarnaud (pictured centre), Area Director for Russia and the CIS for RegStaer’s main supplier, Gebr Heinemann of Germany. The eager
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Airports
Aldeasa underway in Atlanta
The Moodie Report is in Atlanta, Georgia, for one of the more significant travel retail openings of recent times. Tomorrow at noon, Aldeasa will formally inaugurate its new duty free shop at the city’s Hartsfield Jackson International Airport – the world’s busiest airport in terms of total passenger numbers. It’s a big moment for the
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Airports
Pleas please me, says the man from Mars
Here’s another example of the Trinity at work – and of how small airports can outshine their bigger cousins in retail terms. Our image comes from Tax Free Asia Pacific in Singapore where confectionery house Mars hosted its first-ever Indian Travel Retailer of the Year award. The award was made by Stuart Bull – the gentleman