Welcome to In Crisis – Travel Retail Voices, our new podcast series in which we speak to travel retail executives around the world to see how they and their businesses are coping with the COVID-19 crisis.
In this episode, we speak to Jonathan Holland, the Singapore-domiciled Englishman who runs one of Asia travel retail’s most thriving and respected independent agency businesses, Jonathan Holland & Associates. Martin Moodie caught up with Jonathan on Tuesday as Singapore, which has controlled the outbreak so very well to date, announced a month-long lockdown in response to a jump in new infections in recent days.
What does a lockdown mean in Singapore? What does it mean for an independent business such as Jonathan’s? And on a lighter note, what will all this mean for his wife Eleen, having to put up with Jonathan at home every day?
There’s something that’s goin’ round, that’s shutting our borders down
It’s a bad time for our sick and our old
CNN’s nightly lullaby, tells of hundreds more that’ve died
I shut off the TV and think all alone, how long can this go on?
Each episode of In Crisis – Travel Retail Voices features the song ‘Pray’, written by Canadian duty free executive Jeff Orson and released in association with The Moodie Davitt Report to raise funds for the the newly established UN COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund. The fundraiser is gaining rapid momentum with soaring YouTube views and rising donations. But we need the travel retail industry’s help to really raise the fund-raising ante and make the song go viral.
‘Pray’ was released via North America online music company Bandcamp, which allows listeners to buy (or gift) the track by making a payment of their own choice (anything from C$1 upwards). Please click the following link to buy (https://lnkd.in/gMsK2jF) or gift it (you can leave a personalised message) to someone you care about who you might not see for a while.
Additionally, if any member of the travel retail community around the world has a connection with a local radio station please ask them to listen to, and play, Pray, and contact Jeff Orson at jorson@pmacanada.com, who is also available to be interviewed about the song.
