Latest posts by Martin Moodie (see all)
- How I overcame Severe Tire Damage to become the oldest influencer in town - April 20, 2024
- Free as a (Kiwi) bird and flying high in Haikou - April 13, 2024
- Discovering Food Accademia’s world of fine flavours at a Hong Kong cha chaan teng - April 6, 2024
Daybreak in Hong Kong. A windless morning and Victoria Harbour is almost mirror-like in its stillness, the only ripples coming from the odd small craft wending its way through the waters.
It’s a beautiful sight from my Interim Moodie Davitt Hung Hom Bureau with puffs of grey cloud hanging over the spectacular Hong Kong island urban skyline, counterpointed by the vastness of the Peak with all its lush greenery and grand houses looming behind.
Down below, an elderly man is practicing his daily Tai Chi routine with ballet-like symmetry among the tables outside Hung Hom station, while early morning joggers make their way along the lovely waterfront promenade.
Whatever its troubles of recent times, and those being piled upon it by the Trump administration, Hong Kong will never lose its splendour, its drama, its pulse. You can just feel the energy here and you also know that its tourism and travel retail base will recover strongly in time.
I love these early morning starts; a couple of cups of strong coffee to kickstart me and then my now daily routine of 45 minutes in the gym to keep my mental facilities sharp as well as trying (probably in vain) to boost my long-deteriorated physical ones.
As always today there are scores of overnight emails to deal with, many of them connected with yesterday’s landmark announcement that we will be working with IAADFS and ASUTIL to create a virtual expo next April.
It’s a bold decision by the two associations, taken early in the certain knowledge that travel retail’s recovery in the region will be nascent at best in early 2021 and that any mass gatherings of people will be difficult to both plan and budget.
We’re delighted to work with these two outstanding organisations in helping to galvanize travel retail in the wider Americas region and to help raise funds to underpin the work of the associations. Never has the role of trade bodies been more important and the 2021 Virtual Summit of the Americas will underscore and assist that.
The joint decision to partner with us also underlines how far we have advanced with our Virtual Expo concept, since announcing it on 27 March. Helped enormously by our event partner FILTR in Singapore and London (what a class act), and the exhilarating imagination and efforts of our brand partners, we think we have created something ground-breaking not just in travel retail terms but within the whole digital world.
You have to aim high. When I launched what was then The Moodie Report in 2002, I wanted it to be the world’s best B2B media. Not the biggest, not the richest, the best. I don’t know if we have achieved that but boy how we try every day to do so. That’s my similar aim with our new virtual expo operation (we now have five events announced with several more in the pipeline) and it’s one shared by FILTR as we take the many learnings of the past few months and apply them to setting the bar higher each day.
The sun has burst through those early morning clouds now. Each time I turn my head from my screen towards the scene outside my window the harbour offers up a different, magical picture. As I write, a Star Ferry is making its short 8 to 10 minute journey from Tsim Sha Tsui to Central, passing its sister vessel travelling in the other direction mid-harbour. It’s a ceaseless, wonderful daily rhythm, the heartbeat of a great city that no political turmoil can ever stop.
