Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

Business trends

Text Boyd Farrow
Images Rex Features, Getty Images

Our round-up of what’s happening in the business world across Europe

RADAR

Rich pickings

Fed up of hearing how much your smug peers in Sweden and Denmark make each year? Thanks to new figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), you can point out that the Swedish government collected 50% of national income in taxes in 2006 – more than any other rich country – with neighbouring Denmark a close second with 47%. In Belgium, the figure was 43%, while in France it was 42%, Norway and Finland 41%, Austria and Italy 41%, the Netherlands 39%, the UK 37%, Hungary 36%, and Czech Republic and Spain 35%.

According to OECD, in general governments claim a bigger slice of national income than a generation ago. The US, meanwhile, paid less than 30% of its income in taxes, while Mexico is the world’s least-taxed rich country (20.6%).

Ireland, where the government claimed 31.7% of gross domestic product, is still a relative tax haven in Europe. On the downside, though, by law everyone living in Ireland has to sit through Riverdance at least once.

Why are we here?

On www.DesignAddict.com

Belgium is not only famous as a centre of design excellence but also for creating the world’s best design portal. www.DesignAddict.com connects the world’s design community via news, interviews, listings and more than 4,000 links to dealers, furniture producers, exhibitions and designers’ portfolios. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, it’s launching a blog written by some of the world’s hottest designers.

The site was created in 1998 by artist Patrick Everaert and Alix Everaert, who worked in a gallery. According to them, the site is the world’s only one-stop shop for anyone wanting to buy a design classic or find out about new products, designers and events. DesignAddict is also a leading e-tail operation – the site is partly financed by advertising, although actually selling items is a wrench for the Everaerts. Their private collection of design classics now totals 1,500 pieces.

In Doha

In November, Prince Philippe and Princess Mathilde of Belgium took executives from more than 170 Belgian companies, trade bodies and government agencies to Qatar in an effort to boost business relations.

According to the Belgian ambassador to Qatar, Guy De Lauwer, who brokered meetings between Belgian and Qatari companies, trade is increasing. “Belgian exports to Qatar have grown from €112.4m in 2005 to €110.8m in only the first half of 2007, whereas the Belgian imports from Qatar grew from €96.9m in 2005 to €88.1m in the first half of 2007,” he said. Of course, these days oil costs even more than diamonds or Belgian chocolate.

BUZZING ABOUT…

Architecture’s golden age

“We are entering a new golden age of architecture,” proclaimed Costas Kondylis at the recent International Property Awards in London, where he was honoured for his work on Manhattan’s Trump World Tower. Kondylis should know. For more than 30 years, the architect, born in the then Belgian Congo, has shaped Manhattan’s skyline. Now he’s focusing on the global market, including €3bn developments in Moscow and Turkey.

In the Russian capital he’s working on a 17,000m2 glass office residential tower for developer JSC City, and a retail and residential project near the Tretyakov Gallery of Modern Art. He has also designed Istanbul’s Sisli project, a 65-storey apartment tower and shopping plaza set to open in 2009.

Kondylis says he encourages designers to take “dream time” to be inspired by art, cinema or fashion. But he warns: “If you take too long devising elaborate plans, the market will have moved on.” He also says “architects should be continually aware of enhancing the market value for the developer and owner”. With his commercial head on, Kondylis is working on two residential towers, one grafted on to a retail development in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city.

Upgrade your trip

Keep on the grass

Holiday Inn, the world’s largest hotel chain, is planning a €45m makeover – the biggest in hotel history – with thousands of franchisees having to meet new standards.

Andy Cosslett, chief executive of parent company InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), has been critical of some Holiday Inn sites since he took charge of the company two years ago and plans to withdraw 120,000 rooms by 2010. “This is far more than a change of logo,” Cosslett told a Holiday Inn franchisee convention in Dallas. “It’s a package of changes, from bedding, showers and lighting, to adding scents and new sounds to welcome guests.”

IHG claims Holiday Inn will be the first big brand to adopt the boutique hotel fashion for ‘scenting’ reception areas and is experimenting with citrus tones such as lemongrass. Many companies in the hospitality trade have begun to use scents, including many larger pubs and clubs, to mask the smells of stale beer and body odour that have become more apparent as smoking has been outlawed across Europe.

Not really… Art

The film Lagerfeld Confidential sets out to show how normal Hamburg-born fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld really is, but actually fails to do justice to the Chanel chief’s commercial genius. Take the new Mobile Art project, a two-year tour of art installations paying homage to the French couture house’s iconic quilted bag, housed inside a collapsible, 700m2 pavilion designed by ‘starchitect’ Zaha Hadid.

The installation, which is expected to hit Hong Kong next month, features the work of various noted contemporary artists, including Yoko Ono, Sylvie Fleury, Tabaimo, Loris Cecchini, Subodh Gupta and Sophie Calle. Admission is free, but will be limited to groups of 15 at a time. Once inside, visitors will be able to interact with the works. Yoko Ono’s, for example, asks visitors to write a wish on a piece of rice paper and attach it to a tree when they’re finished.

“It’s another way to communicate, to let Chanel surprise you,” Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion activities at Chanel, told Women’s Wear Daily. “What we want to show is that creativity is not only for a product or an advertising campaign. It’s the engine and essence of our brand.” In other words, it will get people talking about a product at the same time as analysts are saying the record growth in handbag sales may be slowing.

After staying in Hong Kong for eight weeks, the exhibition is expected to move to London, Moscow, Paris, Milan, Berlin and Hamburg.

DRAWING BOARD

Blind ambition

A smart social campaign to take advantage of technology comes courtesy of Brussels-based media agency Duval Guillaume. The starting point of the initiative

A Blind Call (www.ablindcall.be) is the fact we all forget to lock our mobile phone keypads every now and then, and often unknowingly make calls to the people whose names are at the top of our phones’ alphabetised directories.

Reasoning that most people would rather donate the cost of these calls to charity, Duval Guillaume created a special number that when dialled donates the cost of the call to a charity for blind people. People in Belgium are recommended to enter this number into their phones as ‘Ablindcall’. So, unless you have a pal nicknamed Aardvark, it should be first in your phonebook.
Obviously, if you have a girlfriend called Abbie you’ll have to ditch her, but she’ll understand – it’s for charity.

SHORT CUTS

Home for the holidays

This year there are ways to beat seasonally higher airfare prices. For the past two years, Christmas and New Year’s Day have fallen on weekends, bunching up the days when most people want to travel. This year, they fall on Tuesdays, giving travellers more flexibility. But don’t leave it too late to find a seat on a suitable off-peak day. According to Travelocity, by the end of November ticket sales in western Europe were up 10%.

Moreover, ticket buyers may not be getting the whole story when they use fare-comparison websites. www.Airfarewatchdog.com reports that some booking engine or ‘aggregator’ sites exclude certain airlines, either because they only sell seats on their own sites or they refuse to pay the aggregator or online travel agency a listing fee.

One last seasonal tip: enter your airline’s number into your mobile phone so you’re first to rebook if the flight is cancelled due to bad weather – hotels are also pricey this time of year.

GROWING GAINS

A profitable malternative

Famous for its beers, Germany has now brewed up an international hit with Bionade, a health drink produced by fermenting malt sugar into gluconic acid instead of alcohol.

The organic carbonated drink, available in elderflower, herb, lychee and ginger-orange, is shifting so many bottles in Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland that the company is on course to announce sales of 250 million bottles in 2007. Since 2003, Ostheim vor der Rhön-based Bionade Corp has seen annual production swell by 300%, while the number of staff has trebled to 150 in 12 months.

Bionade has been around since 1985, the brainchild of brewer Dieter Leipold, who concocted a health drink to ensure his family business survived flattening beer sales. Few consumers in the land of the lederhosen were won over by the sweet taste and bright packaging, and the product gathered dust. However, since 2000, when the drink was given a Red Bull-type makeover, which transformed it into a cool low-calorie option for newly health-conscious Mittle Europeans, the company can’t increase production fast enough. Now other German brewers, including the mighty Becks, are foraging for hedgerow fruits to create their own rival drinks.

It looks like 2008 will be an even bigger year for Bionade. Now distributed in the US, the drink has so many American fans acquisition-thirsty Coca-Cola is reportedly licking its lips. However, the German company has other plans, including building its own bottling plant.

Traffic report

Mousebound consumers

Internet shoppers across western Europe will spend €51bn on Christmas shopping online this festive season, up 58% on last year and accounting for around 39% of total annual online sales, according to analyst Forrester. Almost 60% of Europe’s internet users will shop online this year.

The UK is the largest online retail market, with more than 27 million people expected to spend a record-breaking €19.9bn in the run-up to Christmas. Around 33 million Germans are expected to shop online, spending less at €12bn. French consumers are projected to spend €6.5bn, while the Italians and Dutch lag well behind on €2.1bn and €1.9bn respectively.

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