I really have to correct the last post – Gatwick Airport might not have handled customer communications very well during the recent snow but they still look wonderfully professional by the side of Eurostar.
There is a story doing the rounds that in late December when one of their trains was stuck outside Folkestone because of a blockage in the tunnel, they sent a car to the side of the train to collect the “supermodel”, Claudia Schiffer. Everyone else was left on board to stew. Eurostar presumably imagined no one would notice a car drawing up and one glamorous lady being escorted from the train.
Richard Brown, the Chief Executive of Eurostar, came up with the limpest response imaginable when asked if this actually happened. “Miss Schiffer travels anonymously, so I can’t confirm it.”
That sounds very much like a confirmation to me.
Eurostar has hundreds of commercially-important clients, many of them large companies who buy thousands of tickets a year. Airlines are much more likely to bend rules for major corporate clients than they are for so-called celebrities – who are often more trouble than they are worth. Not only was Eurostar’s action incredibly insensitive, it also seems commercially inept. And if they really thought they could do this without people seeing it and telling the press, then they are living in a fantasy world.
