[Publisher’s introduction: I have been in Haiti over recent days in my role as a Founding Member of the Hand in Hand for Haiti Steering Committee*. There I joined up with my co-Founders, Ed Brennan, Chairman and CEO of DFS and Olivier Bottrie, President of The Estée Lauder Companies Travel Retail Worldwide. We were there
Events
Hand in Hand for Haiti – discovering inspiration on the Central Plateau
And so our final road trip begins – a return excursion from Port-au-Prince to the town of Thomonde in Haiti’s vast and chronically poor Central Plateau. To get there we need to take the long, two-and-a-half hour drive north east from the capital through spectacular mountain scenery and scores of tiny villages. We’re going to
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Hand in Hand for Haiti – a Green field hospital of hope
Our journey around Haiti is nearing its end. After our epic drive to and from Les Abricots, Saturday night is spent back at the Auberge Inn in Jérémie where our host Juliette Nicolas Tardieu produces a splendid meal. Again there’s rice, chicken, goat and plantain with plenty of the excellent Barbancourt rum (tonight we drink
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Hand in Hand for Haiti – Jérémie, City of Poets
We’re all emotionally moved and humbled by our visit to shanty town Cité Soleil as we make our way back to the domestic terminal at Port-au-Prince’s Toussaint Louverture International Airport. If ever there was a case of people crying out for help, it is those we met this morning. The humility we saw and the
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Hand in Hand for Haiti – inside Cité Soleil
It’s a 5.45 a.m. start today, to allow us to visit Port-au-Prince’s infamous shanty town Cité Soleil, before we fly to Jérémie in the south west of Haiti. You don’t just walk into Cité Soleil – it’s a dangerous place on many levels, home to some 250,000 residents who live in acute poverty and amid
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Hand in Hand for Haiti – a touch of divine intervention
God moves in mysterious ways… After we return to Jacmel Airport for our onward journey to Les Cayes, we encounter a group of nuns from the famous Missionaries of Charity, founded by the legendary Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa died in 1997 but the Roman Catholic group has stayed true to her remarkable mission to help
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Hand in Hand for Haiti – Journey to Jacmel
It’s a dank, misty morning as we drive down through Port-au-Prince on our way to the domestic airport terminal to catch an early flight to the town of Jacmel. Our route takes us past countless crushed buildings; sombre, grey heaps of rubble, some with undiscovered bodies still buried deep beneath. A simple white sheet hanging
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A testament to global warming as Orlando show begins
The Moodie Report is in Orlando for the annual Duty Free Show of the Americas, run by the ever-impressive IAADFS. After a few years in Fort Lauderdale, the exhibition has returned to its long-time home, driven by a desire to have all delegates under one roof. And what a roof it is – the Marriott
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The Compassionate Club
The Consortium Club has been putting smiles on people’s faces again – theirs, mine and, most important of all, at least 15 children’s. As regular readers of The Moodie Blog will know, The Consortium Club is a group of UK travel retail suppliers, retailers and buyers who meet regularly to discuss and advance industry issues
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The Englishman who walked (backwards) up a mountain
Meet ‘Captain’ Bob. The Moodie Report may bear the name of its Founder and Publisher but Chief Operating Officer Bob Wilby is actually the guy who keeps it all together. He’s been a constant at The Moodie Report since its early days, proving the perfect steady foil to the thoroughly disorganised traits of the Founder.
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DFNI Charity Ball chooses a good cause
Each year for the past decade and a half the DFNI Charity Ball in London has chosen and helped a very good cause. Down the years the event has raised very large sums for a numer of excellent and often unsung charities. This year’s beneficiary is N/a’an ku sê Lifeline Clinic in Namibia. It was
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Prepare to enter India’s Kingdom of Dreams
Delhi’s new Terminal 3 is not the only spectacular tourism-related infrastructure development due to open in Delhi in the near future. So is Kingdom of Dreams (http://kingdomofdreams.co.in), possibly the most dazzling tourism attraction I have ever seen – and that’s an assessment made while the facility is still a construction site. When it opens next
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Events
A welcome relationship
It’s encouraging to see a closer relationship being forged between ACI Europe and the European Travel Retail Council (ETRC) at this year’s ACI Europe Trading Conference & Exhibition in Malta (26-28 April). Unveiling details of the programme, ACI Europe Director General Olivier Jankovec (pictured) said that in order to address a number of threats, industry