Dear British Media... please don’t ruin our summer this year!!!

Arab clients’ season in London was badly affected last year not by the financial turmoil that loomed over the world but mainly by the swine flu overcooked propaganda. This is a great lesson that should be, and hopefully has been, learnt by the British media. As usual, British media amplified the story of the epidemic last year to a level that regular visitors to London changed their holiday destinations to safer, or less pessimistic, cities in which the media wasn’t acting as an angel of death. In France and Italy for example, a similar amount of people caught the virus but the French or the Italian media didn’t get to its weapons making an all singing all dancing story of the issue... in other words, we didn’t see most of the front pages of their papers predicting more than 100,000 cases a day. On this side of the channel however, we were bombarded by loom and gloom coverage which affected not only our mood but our economy as well. Knowing that the 1.5 million Arab clients who flock to London each year contribute for nearly 30% of the luxury market turnover, I don’t think that scaring them away in the middle of an economic crisis was the brightest of ideas. To make things worse, Arabs were not the only valuable customers who were affected by the negative media, Chinese (seeing those wearing masks all the time), Russians and even English shoppers were more reluctant to hit the shops or treat themselves to a shopping spree in London (I mean you cannot blame them thinking that they might be among the unlucky 100,000). This year, general elections would be the next big thing for the media. So please, by the name of the thousands who try to earn their living working in the London retail, tourism and services market... either take it easy on the news or let those glum columnists go on a long holiday this year (our treat). By: M Said Chaarawi, Managing Director, UnderstandArabia Ltd

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