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“What is an automatic garage door?”
“It is a garage door that opens and closes itself on your behalf. What do you think of that?”
“I think if I were a garage door, I should rather miss the old days.” – From A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
Travel retail publishing can be a fickle sector. And a diverse one. It is a world I have inhabited for almost four decades and led the respective market leaders – Duty-Free News International (DFNI) through the 90s and The Moodie Davitt Report (originally The Moodie Report) since 2002 – for most of them.
I have seen titles come and go. Anyone remember International Tax-Free Trader, once the runaway market leader and original owner of the global trade show that would eventually morph into TFWA World Exhibition? Or ITC/Tax Free Marketing, an important career lift-off point for current Duty Free World Council and European Travel Retail Confederation President Sarah Branquinho, and the long-time doyen of travel retail journalists, Doug Newhouse?
Frontier magazine has long since been subsumed into DFNI though its annual awards of the same name, held every year in Cannes, deservedly flourish to this day.
I have also seen a multitude of journalists come and go. The top-class (Doug Newhouse, Susan Gray, John Rimmer, Rebecca Mann, Charlotte Turner, Melody Ng and the late Linda Hopkins, Alec Smith and Paul Pasternak) and, well let’s be charitable, the not so good. But I have never seen a title nor journalist (apparently) come and go as quickly as Travel Retail Weekly, which burst onto the scene in June via a container shipload of self-promotion and a video broadcast featuring a perhaps understandably nervous (for reasons I shall explain in a moment) male presenter, posted on LinkedIn.
“Good morning and welcome to Travel Retail Weekly news,” the young man began, neither he nor any caption giving any clue to his identity. “I’m your host, bringing you the most important developments in the global travel retail and duty-free industry.
“This is our inaugural broadcast for the week of June 2 through 8th 2025. Today’s headlines: Japan considers ending duty-free shopping for tourists. Korean sales show troubling trends despite rising customer numbers and industry leaders gather momentum around digital transformation, plus we’ll share exclusive insights from LinkedIn discussions that traditional publications simply can’t access.”
An interesting claim, especially as The Moodie Davitt Report is more active on LinkedIn than all our competitors combined. I was also interested to hear the anonymous young man’s observations on the Korean duty-free market, a channel I have been covering in great depth since 1989, when I made the first of what could become at least an annual visit to the Republic.
“New data from the Korea Duty Free Association reveals a concerning paradox in the Korean market,” our host observed. “While customer numbers rose by 4% year-over-year to over 2.4 million visitors in April, total sales actually declined by 5.25% to US$873.5 million.
“What’s particularly telling is that foreign customer numbers surged by over 20% yet their spending per person dropped significantly. Korean officials point to what they call the erosion of the formerly all important reseller business. This suggests fundamental changes in how people shop duty free, moving away from bulk purchasing toward more personal consumption patterns.”
I barely listened to the rest of the report as something was nagging me. As he brought the programme to a close with a further observation – “The shift from reseller-driven to consumer-focused retail models appears to be accelerating, particularly evident in the Korean market data” – topped off with a dessert-sized dollop of self-publicity (“I’m your host, and we’ll be back next week with more exclusive insights, combining traditional industry reporting with real-time LinkedIn intelligence that gives you the complete picture”), I realised what it was.
Those weren’t our incognito host’s words nor insights. They were mine. To confirm the fact, I checked my article of 10 June (below).
Similarly, the precise percentage changes and the Korean Won to US Dollar conversions were all my work. Hard work too, based on getting the data in the first place from my sources in South Korea and then translating and converting it.
When Doug Newhouse retired at the end of 2017, I wrote, “He redefined travel retail journalism, sourcing original stories in a way that many of today’s generation of reporters, weaned on google alerts and using other journalists’ stories as their idea of lead-sourcing, wouldn’t be capable of.
“I note, for example, that Doug has already posted three stories online today, which, to remind you, is Sunday, New Year’s Eve. Who to battle daily now? Who to curse when beaten to a story? Who to force me to rise each morning in the wee small hours to ensure I can match him? Who to keep me and us honest?”
Certainly not Travel Retail Weekly it seems. I decided to post a comment under the title’s LinkedIn entry, noting that someone (or more likely something) had read my Korean report closely. As in very closely. In rather more polite terms than I was tempted to deploy, I reminded the still unknown publisher of the deplorable nature of such plagiarism.
To my great surprise, my missive prompted the following reply.
“I am writing to offer my sincere apologies for using your work without proper acknowledgment and publishing it as my own. I recently became aware that what I did constitutes a serious ethical lapse, and I take full responsibility for my actions. The article was prepared by AI and it did not notify me of the sources.
“However, ignorance does not excuse my mistake, and I deeply regret any harm, inconvenience, or distress this has caused you.
“Please know that it was never my intention to misrepresent your work or take credit for something that is rightfully yours. I now recognize the importance of proper attribution and respecting the creative and intellectual efforts of others. You are a veteran in our field and I would not want to get on your bad side. I am hoping that you will let me continue with my dream and ambition.
“I am taking immediate steps to correct this issue. I am a single entrepreneur with a similar vision like you and have worked in the field for long and want to contribute in what way I can.
“Once again, I sincerely apologize for this oversight. I value integrity and honesty, and I will make every effort to ensure that such a mistake does not happen again in the future.”
He/she or it seems since to have been as good as his/her/its word, for the Travel Retail Weekly broadcast has burned out quicker than any of Elton John’s Candles in the Wind ever did. No more programmes since and the LinkedIn platform removed within hours.
My favourite Amor Towles quote from his sublime A Gentleman in Moscow with which I began this Blog rather sums up my sentiments – and I suspect Doug Newhouse’s if I was to relate this story to him. For I, too, rather miss the old days.
Nowadays when I see bylines such as ‘Staff Writer’ I am immediately sceptical. Is this a person or a machine? Where’s a grizzled old hack when you need one? Oh that’s right. I am one. ✈
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