The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As this most troubled, often tragic year draws to a close, The Moodie Davitt Report takes a moment to send all our readers this short year-end video message.
In just two minutes it captures the lows (of which, alas, there were too many) and highs of 2020 and our thanks for your readership and support.
It documents how after a vibrant 2019, the new year promised so much. And then the unthinkable happened as a mysterious virus in Wuhan, China grew into a full-fledged global pandemic and cut a devastating swathe through the aviation, tourism and travel retail sectors.
With our own business, like so many others, under fierce pressure throughout 2020, we have endeavoured to keep readers informed throughout the turmoil. We have brought you the bad news – told factually and without hyperbole – and, wherever possible, the good.
We have endeavoured to help where we could, for example via our Travel Retail Talent Retention Scheme; and rally where we should – as evidenced by our Clap for our Carers campaign.
We kept innovating, nowhere more so than with our successful Virtual Travel Retail Expo, an event that unified the industry at a time it needed such togetherness more than ever.
We kept our perspective and our sense of humour but we also conveyed sadness and mourning (some of it very personal) when needed.
We gave back constantly – making major donations to The Smile Train and One Tree Planted (through our Trinity Forest Project) – and we maintained our voice at times when it might have been easier to play safe.
We got personal via travel retail’s only Blog, while somewhere along the way we turned 18, not exactly amid the party atmosphere we had planned.
We kept our commitment to honest, accurate, neutral reporting; to transparent reader and expo analytics; and we remained true to our 18-year pledge of being ‘Fast, Factual, Free’.
We did all this because of your support as an industry, and particularly that of our business partners who helped us maintain our service and our conviction. Without such support we simply cannot sustain our unique subscription-free tradition of 18 years and serve the channel with one of the world’s most respected and trusted B2B media titles.
Please take a moment to watch this short video, which brings closure of a sort to a 12-month period that will be remembered for all the wrong reasons and which will shape our business community and all its stakeholders for years to come.
Thank you again for your readership and support of The Moodie Davitt Report. We send our year-end best wishes to you all and hope and pray for the better times that surely lie ahead. – Martin Moodie, Dermot Davitt, and The Moodie Davitt Report team
