Up close and personal in travel retail
“Most people see airports as buildings and planes, I see them as people – millions of people that come together,” Hari Marar told me over coffee at the Taj Bengaluru. It’s an opportunity to influence a large cross-section of people and maybe humanity.”
Ever Rich Duty Free is indeed, like Confucius, standing firm at 30. Firm to its values of integrity, professionalism, innovation, commitment to public welfare and dedication to the greater good laid out by Founder & Chairman Simon Chiang three decades ago.
It’s a brutal corporate world out there at the moment and with the great Chinese wave that has driven our industry for the first quarter of the 21st century now resembling a series of gentle ripples (in spending, not traveller, terms) reinvention is the name of the game.
The calligrapher kindly asked me to choose a design of my choice. Admiring the bright orange hues and the lovely shape of the lettering, I made my choice. “What does it mean?” I asked. “It means ‘Write like an angel.”
You practically need a hiking pole and boots to get around each Expo hall but it’s worth the effort to see the incredible advances being made by the Chinese across multiple fields.
All of us in travel retail have had these moments of not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Not only would a Heathrow transit mean 28 hours or so of flying plus transit time from Mumbai to Hong Kong, but I’d actually not be back in time for my subsequent flight to Hainan.
In family terms, the Ahujas also put the worst of times to the best of use, transforming the family ranch with astounding alacrity and vision into the outstanding facility it is today.
A glance at our home page tells you how passionately and well The Moodie Davitt Report women team members have embraced the task of underlining the importance of International Women’s Day. The page is splendidly awash with stories by women about women.
Yup, it’s my birthday, which as always coincides with the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, who died in 589 AD. Roughly around the time I was born.
“How would you feel if I told you that we all have the ability to prevent aging, not just those of us who look young for our ages, but every one of us?” she asked. Very happy indeed would be my answer.
As we met outside our planned rendezvous in Aberdeen (the Hong Kong version, not Scotland), Andrew looked at me with bemused surprise. “Wow. You look so young!” “Yeah, right,” I replied miserably. “No, I’m not joking. You do. You look so much younger.”
Gary and I have inhabited the same industry for decades (he joined Plaza Bali in Indonesia in 1991), battled at various points an identical health foe, and retained our joy for travel retail over all those years.
When Alfons Loacker purchased the patisserie in which he had worked since he was a boy, little could he have foreseen the extraordinary journey the company that bears his name would undertake over the following century.