Roger Collis

Roger Collis
Roger has earned world-wide recognition as a business travel guru through his weekly column, 'The Frequent Traveler,' in the International Herald Tribune; and as a contributing columnist for the New York Times. He has been described as the dean of business-travel journalists in Europe, who ‘created the template for business-travel columns in newspapers worldwide.’ An actor and broadcaster, Roger provides the many voices offered by Voicesetcetera.com.

Words

Roger has published two books so far and countless articles and columns in many newspapers and magazines throughout the world; for example: The International Herald Tribune, New York Times, CNN Traveller Magazine American Express’ Travel and Leisure, British Airways Business Life…

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Airborne challenges for weighty passengers

Here’s an idea whose time may have come. Samoa Air, a tiny South Pacific airline, has introduced a ‘pay by weight’ pricing policy on its inter-island flights. The logic is diabolically simple: weigh passengers along with their baggage to determine the price of their tickets.   Some folks are calling this an unfair ‘fat tax;’ but could it actually catch on? 

While it may challenge weighty passengers to travel light; it could soften the blow to families traveling with small children – or anorexic models with heavy suitcases. Click here

Is Euro-Lunch giving way to Euro-Breakfast?

IT’S “martini weather,” my boss used to say when I was working in the Midwest a hundred years ago. “I’ll let you buy me lunch at Tony’s.” Which gave us no end of encouragement for the budget meeting that afternoon. Less benign was the ad agency’s invitation to self-destruct at the notorious pre-presentation lunch at the All America Club in Chicago..

Times, of course, have changed. Not that I really regret the passing of the Great American Three-Martini Lunch. It was always great to catch up on corporate gossip, although it sometimes led to some strange business decisions. But I do draw a line at the neo-puritan cult of minimalism: “Let’s do lunch, we don’t need to eat,” an editor in New York suggested the other day. Or, “We assume you had lunch on the plane.” The best strategy is to fill up with two power breakfasts to last you through the day. Click here

Marketing the Great British Breakfast

SOMERSET MAUGHAM famously said that to eat well in England you must eat breakfast three times a day. Well, things have improved over the years, especially if you’re on expenses. But the old cynic would surely be amused by the constant appeal for the Great British Breakfast among the business community. Not that the three-hour lunch has gone entirely out of style, but “doing breakfast” is the most powerful success symbol. Last month, after 146 years Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, bastion of the male chauvinist business lunch, finally opened for business breakfasts. Click here

Those were the days…

Those were the days of hope
When despair
Could be put off for another day
When we had time to hope;
There was always tomorrow
Tomorrow was another day.

Those were the days before
We stopped
Mortgaging the future
To plunder the past

Hardly without knowing
That each day living
In the future
We were betraying the past

How could we know
That the only future
Is what we leave behind?                

Those were the days before
There were no more tomorrows;
Before we knew
That it’s easier to rebuild the past
Than to rebuild the future

 Roger Collis August, 2012

Are top managers born under a lucky star?

What do captains of industry have in common with famous generals and sports champions? According to Dr. Michel Gauquelin, the French psychologist, they all tend to be born under the influence of the planet Mars.

This extraordinary theory originated in 1949. This was the year that Gauquelin, then a student at the Sorbonne, set out to prove by statistical analysis that the so-called laws of astrology have no scientific foundation.

Gauquelin could find no evidence to support the idea that signs of the zodiac determine anything, or that horoscopes can be used to predict the future. But to his astonishment he did discover a statistically significant relationship between the positions of certain planets and the birth times of famous people. Click here

Food and the Single Man

Food and the Single Man’ is available as a downloadable ebook at Amazon.co.ukhttp://amzn.to/v76oyy priced £3.87 and Amazon.com - http://amzn.to/tDT43J; Kobo has now listed the book: http://bit.ly/vbPh7u priced £4.91 and it is on W.H. Smith’s: http://bit.ly/s1Pfb9 priced £4.91; I spotted it on www.bookdepository.co.uk priced £3.98;  Foyles: www.foyles.co.uk has listed it at £5.09; Apple has also approved and listed it: http://bit.ly/uHut3t priced $9.99. It is listed on Waterstones.com at £4.79.

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