Up close and personal in travel retail
Two ultra-exclusive products, born of a product synonymous with the duty-free industry, an astoundingly sustained success over decades. And two acts of kindness, different in scale but bound together by a common sense of humanity as tightly as a Toblerone bar is by that irresistible mix of honey, almonds and nougat
Selfies with a large, anthropomorphic, red-and-yellow honey bee. Up close and personal with Ronald McDonald. A close encounter with Hong Kong’s famed Pink Dolphins. All in a day’s work for a travel retail Publisher.
The event will simultaneously celebrate several landmarks – the 20th anniversary of our (and travel retail’s) relationship with Smile Train; The Moodie Davitt Report’s 25th anniversary; my 40th year in the channel; and the duty-free industry’s 80th anniversary. Wow, what a joyous, joint celebration it promises to be.
November is lung cancer awareness month. Harry responded by launching ‘The Sinead Especial’, a sublimely tastebud-tempting taco based on some of my daughter Sinead’s favourite ingredients. How about that?
When I spied him at the British Airways desk, I noticed Peter was checking in his golf clubs. “What did you need those for?” I asked, a fair question, I thought, given I had played golf with Peter on a couple of occasions at the Dubai Duty Free Golf World Cup.
Where once, the town was synonymous with the Wagnerian thunder of ironworks and coal mines, now you’re more likely to hear the soothingly sweet symphony of birdsong from 70 species of feathered friends.
When the Hong Kong Observatory issued the No. 10 Hurricane Signal, I reckon if I had stepped outside I wouldn’t have needed British Airways – I would simply have been blown to London.
I didn’t show emotion, I felt numb. I didn’t cry. I wouldn’t allow myself to think. I didn’t want to think about my husband and kids and what their future would be. I couldn’t let my mind go there.
At least I was better off than a fellow passenger, a mother travelling with several family members. “How many bags are you missing Ma’am?” “Eleven.”
“This is a shop that refines what is possible and a symbol of a rising Ethiopia. This is more than a retail space, it is a statement that Ethiopia is raising the bar.”
“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.