Martin Moodie is that rarest of species – a flying Kiwi. The New Zealand-born writer, editor and commentator has spent much of the past 39 years in the sky or in airports, researching, reporting and commentating on the travel retail sector that he loves. After emigrating to the UK in 1987 (he still can’t fathom why), Martin stumbled into the drinks and duty-free industry at US publication Impact International before playing a key role in developing the-then market-leading Duty-Free News International through the 1990s, where he became Editor and later Managing Director.

In 2002, convinced of the future of digital publishing, he made the fateful decision to go it alone and launched a humble 7-page pdf newsletter called The Moodie Report. The company’s ‘Worldwide Headquarters’ was his garden shed in London, his only staff four goldfish referred to as his Finnish team members.

The rest is history. Within three years The Moodie Report (now The Moodie Davitt Report) was the market leader ahead of stiff multi-national competition and both it and he haven’t looked back since.

A lover of good wine (particularly from his homeland), the All Blacks, Bob Dylan, John Prine, Leonard Cohen, Mark Knopfler, Johnny Cash, John Steinbeck and F.Scott Fitzgerald, he plays the piano shockingly, listens to music incessantly, works around the clock and never admits to defeat. 70 going on 13, he now lives in Hong Kong, China, overlooking the South China sea.

His planned epitaph is ‘Free of duty at last’.