Up close and personal in travel retail
“I’ve a blue dress on so you can recognise me.” Both of us were there on time, albeit 50 metres apart, Pam thinking she had been stood up. Me? You guessed it. Chatting away to a bemused woman in a blue dress. Who turned out not to be running retail at Gatwick Airport but was impressed that I knew so much about it…
“Get Shiseido on the line. Two bottles down and we’re still not finished with him…”
In the face of inevitable and glittering industry acknowledgements Martin, you will always be more famous as the guy that did the Triple Salchow off the hotel bed during lockdown.
To maintain the same rigid 14-day cancellation policy from the days when quarantine room demand far exceeded supply is outrageous.
Jacqui and I compared our life journeys from New Zealand to where we are today. Journeys from the bottom of the earth that have, we hope, a long way to run yet.
I may, just may, about to become the face of ‘the website that never slumps’.
What I like most perhaps about the store is its non-formulaic approach. No semi-forced walkthrough here, you can go off-piste just as much as you want with a surprise in the form of a travel retail-exclusive or newcomer at almost every turn.
I’ve been travelling so much that when I visited my dentist on Friday, I actually (and I swear this is true) went to fasten my seat belt as I sat in my chair. Given my aversion to dentists and what followed, I probably should have.
Travel retail, already a fine showcase at OR Tambo, can be a gateway to deeper knowledge and wider engagement with the best that South Africa has to offer.
The staff at the Airport Regal do a good job and my ten-pace room was ok but I still feel like I have escaped from room 1072 rather than simply having checked-out.
To ward off bordeom I recommend the COVID equivalent of the old Pick-up Sticks game. In this version (I guess we should call it a variant) you use swabs instead and push them up your nostrils.
What we’ve discovered in the past few days is the sheer diversity, wealth and quality of South African cuisine, alongside magnificent hospitality.
Tourists, so often lost in their own pleasure zones, tend to be unaware of what their presence can mean to regional economies. In contrast, local people are profoundly aware of it.