Latest posts by Martin Moodie (see all)
- Get yourself down to El Gordo, ‘Asia Pacific Travel Retail HQ’, for a Sinead Especial, the best Taco in town - November 5, 2025
- Discovering Nomad’s land and bumping into an old friend in Alicante - October 24, 2025
- Flying Kiwi meets Travelling Omelette with a drop of Penderyn in between - October 15, 2025
Welcome to The Moodie Davitt Report Alicante Bureau.
The combination of my location and my profession means I officially rank as what is known these days as a Digital Nomad, defined by Google AI as “a person who uses technology to work remotely while travelling and living in different locations.”
Such a title and lifestyle involves being geographically free from a traditional office and can be pursued through remote work for a company or running an online business (both, as it happens, in my case), AI tells me.
Key elements, it says, include a reliable internet connection and a laptop, with many choosing to work from temporary housing, a café or recreational vehicles.
Hold on a minute. Doesn’t that mean I have been a Digital Nomad since I founded (what was then) The Moodie Report in 2002? Surely my West London garden shed (which I dubbed our Worldwide Headquarters despite working alone except for the company of four goldfish – known as my Finnish staff – all now sadly departed to the great goldfish bowl in the sky) must have counted as ‘temporary housing’?
After all, I only spent an average 16 hours a day in it before tip-toeing back into my house so as not to wake my wife and kids.
Recreational vehicles? Heck, yes, I have written more Moodie Blog and Moodie Davitt Report words while 35,000 feet up in the sky than James Joyce’s Ulysses, Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace, Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, and Agatha Christie’s The Complete Miss Marple put together.
You can add in (though you will need a calculator) Shree Haricharitramrut Sagar, the 10,000-page whopper of a biography of a famed Indian yogi called Bhagwan Shree Swaminarayan, perhaps the only book to double as reading matter and a TV stand. Light reading for your next holiday, perhaps.
Anyway, you get my point: I have ticked off all the Digital Nomad boxes for almost a quarter of a century. Reliable internet connection and a laptop? In this super-digitalised age, another tick. Even up in the sky on my homes away from home, Cathay Pacific, Qatar Airways and British Airways.
The term Digital Nomad was coined in 1997 by Tsugio Makimoto and David Manners in their book of the same name. They correctly predicted that technological advancements would allow people to work remotely while travelling, a vision that has truly become reality for ‘the website that never sleeps’.
But my current Digital Nomad status is very different from all that has gone before. As noted in my previous Blogs, I am splitting my time between Wales – home of my daughter and our COO Sinead Moodie, who is being treated for a critical illness – and Europe, for a combination of close proximity and UK non-domicile reasons.
This is off-season in Los Arenales del Sol, home to my Interim Bureau and part of the city of Elche in the province of Alicante. According to Wikipedia, it has a registered population of some 2,000 inhabitants, a number that multiplies at least 15-fold in peak tourist season. Late October is certainly not peak tourist season and Los Arenales del Sol is all the better for it.
Despite the concrete – and seemingly uncontrolled – sprawl that has contaminated this previously pristine place (like so many Spanish coastal areas) over recent decades, mankind simply cannot spoil Los Arenales del Sol.
The combination of the Mediterranean’s rich-blue hues, the region’s dune and marine habitats, the views into the distance of the magnificent La Serrella (‘Alicante Pyrenees’) hovering over the central city, the warmth of the locals and the wondrous seafood on offer here, would call you back time and again. Off-season, that is.
Despite all those attractions, I’ve managed to get plenty of work in, back into the full swing of things between visits back to Ystradgynlais, Wales. I even managed to catch up with a long-time industry friend, long-time Rémy Cointreau Global Travel Retail Director Peter Sant, now Director of consultancy MPC Global.
Not only is Peter one of the most able executives I have met in this channel but he is one of its very best people, a man whom no-one has a bad word for.
Over a coffee (him) and Estrella beer (me) I caught up with Peter before he flew back to the UK from Alicante–Elche Miguel Hernández Airport. 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, not unkindly, given I had played golf with Peter on a couple of occasions at the Dubai Duty Free Golf World Cup. One time as he took his time over a 30-foot putt for a 9 on a par 3, he was warned for slow play. And that was by his own teammates.
In my Dubai Duty Free Golf World Blogs of yesteryear, during his Rémy Cointreau days, I once wrote of his chances of winning the trophy: “In Cognac terms, VSOP stands for ‘Very Superior Old Pale’. In Peter’s case (golfing at least) it means (and we’re being kind here) ‘Vile swing; ordinary putter’. Peter’s short game is more X-rated than XO while his long game is like the ‘Angels’ share’ in Cognac – all air. Odds: 150 Squillion to 1.”
Again, not unkind, I thought. However, Peter assured me his game is much improved and he is now playing off a 26 handicap. That I can tell you, dear readers, is astonishing progress. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer man.
As we bade farewell, Peter kindly offered to take some photos of the Avolta-run Alicante Duty Free for me. Look out for them next week in our popular Images of the Day column in association with Duty Free Global.
If Peter’s photo shooting is on a par, as it were, with his golf game, they promise to tell a very interesting tale indeed.
Did he spray his shots right into the fragrance department? Did he go into the drink? Did his mission go up in smoke within the tobacco zone? Or will he (as happened once when he sliced his drive into a Dubai car park) have shot the lights out?
All will be revealed soon. ✈