THE CONVERSATION SIR RICHARD BRANSON
in brief...
Is there anyone you particularly admire for their work in the travel industry? There's a few people who've done incredible things. I was doing a talk in Greece when I was a younger man and there was a very young man in the audience and he kept on asking me questions. Then a couple of months later he popped up in my office in England asking me a whole lot more questions. Anyway, that was Stelios [Haji-Ioannou] and he ending up starting easyJet. So now when I do speeches I’m always quite nervous about which person there is going to end up competing with me. Hats off to him for what he’s achieved. Tony Fernandes used to work at
Virgin and went on to start Air Asia. In fact, I wrote a little piece about him in Time magazine today about how well he’s coped with the accident and what a great company he’s built. There’s a lot of great people out there.
Do you have a stand-out memory from your travels over the years? I was 28 years old and pretending I wanted to buy an island. I was trying to impress a lovely lady, who’s now my wife, and the estate agent had laid on a helicopter. We were sitting in it and there was this most beautiful island [Necker Island] in the world below me and a beautiful lady next to me and I was determined to go and get them both.
What keeps you grounded? My wife is very grounded and very sane and very Glaswegian. She’s very unimpressed with anything that might get my head a bit too big and brings me down to earth. That's worked for the years we’ve been together. I’d come running home all excited about something and she’d be "put the kettle on and change the nappies". She knows what matters in life.
PROFILE
SIR RICHARD BRANSON'S Virgin Group includes health clubs, financial services, telecoms, media and more, but its travel brands remain at the core: Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America, Virgin Australia, Virgin Trains and now Virgin Hotels. He was born in London in 1950 and his first business venture, at the age of 16, was a publication called Student. He is married with two children and recently became a grandfather.
Where’s the strangest place you've ever stayed the night? I did the whole of April Fools' Day in jail once. My staff and the police managed to get me locked up from midnight on April Fools' Day right through to midday – they got their own back on me big time. That was an interesting night. It was at Harrow Road police station and when I came out of the cell the next day there were 300 members of Virgin staff and the police laughing their heads off outside the door and I did not realise I was being had.
THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE 33
JACK EDINGER/VIRGIN HOTELS
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96