Is it the person behind it – the winemaker or proprietor? Or is it the land and vineyards where the grapes are grown? Or is…
Is it the person behind it – the winemaker or proprietor? Or is it the land and vineyards where the grapes are grown? Or is…
However, the new walk-through departures store which World Duty Free opened in the UK’s second-largest international airport late last year gives an interesting insight into the direction of travel of much of the wider duty free industry. I was at Gatwick for an in-depth tour of the 2,000sq m store at the official opening and it strikes me that several features of the design and…
The revered shop-window effect of travel retail is all well and good, but the challenge of living with very low profit margins is daunting for smaller to medium-sized suppliers. It also puts off others from ever considering the channel as a potential place to do business. The root cause of this lack of profitability is the oft-reviled airport retail concession model. Competing operators bid for…
Vintage variations are endlessly debated, celebrated or mourned. And, like some kind of organoleptic scientific instrument, the slightest fluctuations in rainfall and temperature can be detected in the apparatus of a glass of wine. Or, to be a little more poetic about it, in wine, you can taste the weather. Of course, that means you can also taste the rather strange or (and let’s call…
Last week, Distell announced that its Bain’s Cape Mountain single grain whisky (40% abv), has gone global. So now we have a whisky form South Africa to join the slew of whisky alternatives to good old scotch. Last night (November 28) it was Diageo’s turn with a tasting/briefing of its major scotch whisky blends along with its #LoveScotch and International Scotch Day (February 8) initiatives.
Why are so many travellers not shopping in duty-free any more? Like many others in the business, I am increasingly convinced that finding answers to this key question is going to be essential if travel retail is going to have a viable future. “The business doesn’t come easy nowadays,” said Simon Knapp, GTR commercial director at Beam Suntory in an interview with me during Cannes,…
Anybody read Jeremy Clarkson in Sunday’s Sunday Times (Oct 29)? I know he is right of Genghis Khan and has a tendency to thump people who don’t organise a plate of steak and chips for him. But I defend his right to be totally politically incorrect, to write what many people think but increasingly daren’t say – and, by the way, he can write…
This is a few years back now – it was the only carrier that served Starbucks coffee (a title recently taken by Delta Airways). When I asked him how much of a hit he was prepared to take on the ticket price for this rather minor perk (to me at least), he said he had only that year paid an extra $100 to fly back…
