Up close and personal in travel retail
Because of the prevailing conditions, I can hear but not see the planes soaring above the distant hills, a sight that, on clear days, serves as a constant and oddly comforting reminder of the world of travel that I have inhabited for the past 37 years.
I’ll let the pictures – not only of the exhibition but of the encouraging consumer engagement it is generating – tell the story. It is one that so richly deserves to be told.
From this height, one of the world’s greatest airports almost resembles a model, with little toy planes coming in to land or roaring along the runways. But it’s very much the real thing.
I’m not so sure that an (albeit elegantly) cordoned-off luxury store – even one bearing the most lustrous brand name on the planet – is actually that alluring.
Well into the first week of the Olympics, it’s a case of so far, so very very good. As testified by last year’s Rugby World Cup, the French sure know how to put on an opening ceremony and a magnificent sporting tournament.
I salute these two good men and true from the business sector that has given me such an enriching living for four decades. For they are indeed torchbearers for the excellence and the values that our definitively global business sector so often represent.
I shall not pain readers with the end result, except to say that Bob Dylan’s songwriting legacy is probably safe for now from any AI assault (Truffles my cat wagging her tail/Gonna pick him up can’t ever fail/Get her from the vet she’s ready to roll/Truffles my friend let’s rock and stroll) is not yet the stuff of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
“Mere seene mein nahin toh tere seene mein sahi. Ho kahin bhi aag lekin aag jalni chahiye.” (If not in my heart, then in your heart. Fire may burn anywhere but it must burn.
The energy, the passion, the support, the hospitality, the professionalism of the ONT team were second to none. Atif has assembled one hell of a class act here and it shows through every aspect of their operation.
There’s just time to sip on a chilled 2023 Banrock Station Chardonnay from South Australia that’s a lot sprightlier than me and munch on some stir-fried cabbage with fungus and celery. The ways I spend my Saturday evenings…
Ramesh has stepped into very big boots indeed, those worn by his predecessor Colm McLoughlin with such distinction since 1983. That responsibility excites rather than daunts him and rightly so.
Already I wrote that the arrivals duty-free store is perhaps the world’s best (having mulled it over and discussed with many people via email and LinkedIn, I would now remove the qualifier ‘perhaps’).
Ao Yun（敖云）– destined, I think, to become one of the world’s great wines – means ‘above the clouds’, which given the amount of time I spend in exactly the same place, makes it one I hope to drink a lot more of in the future
