Up close and personal in travel retail
He has captained the ship through the most tumultuous, sustained and severe storm in our industry’s history. He has done it with a trademark determination and a remarkable calm. Al Mal Tiempo, Buena Cara – when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
Over dinner Lal told me how he would watch the wealthy residents and citizens of Dubai turn up to his workplace in their swanky cars. “I would look at the cars and decide which one I would buy one day,” he said. Not dream about. Decide. And that is precisely what he did.
This is the closest I’ve got to Hainan since before the pandemic. Where’s my parachute when I need it?
“We were comfortable before as an industry, surfing a good wave… now we aim to be the best at what we know and become great at what we might not yet know.”
Don’t punish the airlines for circumstances beyond their control. As long as appropriate documentation was provided and properly checked at the departure airport how can the airline be held to account?
Two legends in their own fields. But not even Novak Djokovic nor Colm McLoughlin could have had any idea of how the next two years would pan out.
Like a couple of Hong Kong hamsters desperately clutching onto their exercise wheel as the men in hamstermat, sorry hazmat, suits come to take them away, Boris is hanging on like grim death.
Who would have possibly believed back then that most of the photos of people working in the travel retail community less than two years later would show them in masks?
Guess who was cast as Captain? Yep. I must have been all of four years old. Man the laugh boats as the movie’s tagline ran.
Just like Uncle Chu, this workload sometimes causes me to paws for thought and look up with a sad face for sympathy. That’s what comes from being an old newshound, I suppose.
Qatar Duty Free and Hainan have been the two shining lights of our channel during this prolonged period of deep gloom. Both are set to glow even brighter in 2022.
The triple jump – What we used to call the hop, step and jump at school is a natural for a finely tuned quarantine athlete such as me. Hop? Why that’s so easy, I could do it on one leg.
It might not feel like it when you’re sat down bleary-eyed and cold inside a giant repurposed air terminal hoping like heck you haven’t caught COVID but the whole system is hugely impressive.