Welcome to In Crisis – Travel Retail Voices, our new podcast series where we speak to travel retail executives around the world to see how they and their businesses are coping with the COVID-19 crisis.
Today’s episode features a trio of voices taken from our first-ever Virtual Wine O’Clock, a wonderful, exuberant but often poignant gathering of around 60 executives from the global travel retail community that we conducted on Thursday (which explains the sound interference on the call, for which we apologise).
Our first virtual chat is with Pier Giuseppe Torresani, Sales Director at Masi Agricola in Verona, Italy, just an hour or so’s drive from Lombardy, the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak. Pier Giuseppe handles travel retail and exports worldwide for Masi, most famous for its magnificent Amarone wines.
We also spoke to Steve Corrigan in New York, a city in which COVID-19 outbreak is cutting a tragic swathe. Steve, well known to many in the duty free industry through long stints with Pernod Ricard and William Grant & Sons, has been working most recently in the city’s hospitality industry.
That’s a sector, like travel retail, that has been devastated by the crisis. [Steve refers to a key video, offering invaluable advice on the COVID-19 virus, produced by a leading US medic, which you can watch by clicking here https://vimeo.com/399733860?ref=em-share]
“It doesn’t address any economic concerns, only health,” says Steve. “The video is raw and a bit ungainly, but his expertise and his message is so clear, non-fearful, unpoliticised, that I found it soothing and encouraging. Maybe you’ll find it helpful too.”
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