Derek Jones

The last time I speculated in this column about the reasons behind a surprising travel acquisition I landed myself in an awkward spot of bother with the buyer.  It was my good friend John Hays who’d just bought Bath Travel and I suggested that the two brands were not a natural fit.  I think John has forgiven me but in my defence I did go on to say that if anyone could make it work it would be him, and on that count he has gone on to prove me right.  Looking back at that deal now it’s clear to see why the Hays approach to retailing applied to a geographically complementary store network has been a real success story.  Hindsight is all well and good but John had the foresight to see the opportunity and to invest in High Street expansion when most others were moving in the opposite direction. I was reminded of this when I woke up this morning to the news that On The Beach had acquired Classic Collection.  My first reaction was that this must have been the result of...

Der Touristik, the parent group of Kuoni, owns just one hotel.  It’s called Playitas and it’s tucked away in a quiet corner of Fuerteventura.  How it came to be owned by Der Touristik is a long story - too long to describe now - but I think it’s fair to say that it wasn’t part of a finely tuned strategy; more just a happy accident. We love our hotel in the same way that some parents love an unplanned and unexpected only child.  For a while we stumbled around not really knowing what to do with it but over time Playitas has developed into a real success story, becoming one of Europe’s best Sports Resort.  It now has a full size Olympic swimming pool, tennis courts, a state of the art road bike and mountain bike facility, the biggest gym I’ve ever seen and an almost endless list of activities, all designed to tone and hone the already rippling bodies of Europe’s elite fitness community. So it was that last week I found myself having breakfast in a restaurant full of Lyc...

Monday Feeling positive today despite the setback of being told in Court that we can’t sell Monarch’s Gatwick Airport slots for millions of pounds.  This is clearly the wrong decision.  Why shouldn’t we be allowed to sell things that the company we’re representing never owned, to someone else who won’t own them either, even after they’ve bought them from us?  It’s obvious. Tuesday Woke up feeling a bit troubled.  I thought I’d finally got my head round the whole airport slot allocation thing but in my dreams I keep seeing cute little cartoon airplanes queuing outside the locked gates of a crowded airport, begging to be given a chance to fly, whilst inside on the runway big old cigar smoking jumbos are parked in front of the terminal waiting to take off (half empty), for the daily hop to Paris. “Use it or lose it!” they all shout as each plane takes off. Made myself a strong coffee and sat down to read the House of Commons Briefing Paper on Airport Slots for the eleve...

Earlier this week on a TV news bulletin, when asked what tour operators were doing to help customers affected by Hurricane Irma, the ‘Travel Expert’ in the studio replied that they were ‘making it up as they go along’. The thing with hurricanes, like pretty much every weather event, is that you can’t predict where or when they’re going to spring up and once in motion, it’s equally difficult to predict where they’re going to go. Hurricane Irma is a meteorologist’s dream, breaking a swathe of records as it sweeps through the Caribbean and on to Florida.  Irma is the first storm in recorded history to sustain wind speeds of 185 mph for 37 hours straight; the strongest storm in the Atlantic ever; and the longest ever category five hurricane.  Irma has generated more energy than the first eight Atlantic storms of this season put together, and when Irma was joined on Saturday by Hurricane José it was the first time in history that there have been two hurricanes with 150 mph winds in...

A few weeks ago the news was full of obituaries for one of my retail heroes, the Swedish founder IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad. Ikea is retail Marmite; for some, the mere mention of the name sends shudders down the spine, but for others it’s the happy prospect of a half day spent meandering round the shop’s curious (and rigorously enforced) one-way-system, followed by several hours fiddling with an Allen key, whilst nursing a bad back and trying to avoid a family bust up. Love it or loathe it (and I love it), IKEA turned furniture retailing on its head and brought Scandinavian design into the reach of millions of customers, continuing its entrepreneurial style through the decades and always staying ahead of the curve. So, when IKEA’s head of sustainability claimed last year that we’ve reached ‘peak stuff’ it struck a chord with me. Stuff, clutter, call it what you like, there’s a growing sense that too many things are crowding into our lives and our thinking. I’ve just been introduc...

When Michael Owen decided that playing for Manchester United was an acceptable thing for an ex-Liverpool player to do, he must have realised that he was pushing himself towards the bottom of the ‘people that Scousers admire most’ list. Like many Liverpool fans I’ve tried hard to ignore Michael ever since, even to the point of muting the commentary when he’s chosen to share his intelligent, unbiased football insights. Imagine my annoyance then, when without warning his voice turned up on the radio in my car last week: ‘Hi! I’m Michael Owen and I know what it’s like to be injured at work.’ Brilliant! Two of the most unwelcome things in my life, Michael Owen and accident at work lawyers, combined in one radio ad to create a supernova of aggravation. I turned the radio off and in the silence that followed began to wonder if Michael had actually sued his employer for damages when he twisted his little toe on the penalty spot (or whatever it was that took him out of action for so lo...