Gordon

"justified. I asked Gordon if he would join me. I recall telling him, 'I don't think I'll be tempting you with money, but what I can offer you is opportunity/ This Gordon saw, fortunately. He must have seen that what we did with our money was to go wide and far, to hunt out opportunities for expansion, to enjoy the real freedom of enterprise. So he joined us, and he very soon brought others, like Geoffrey Parrack and Tim Hedgecock, to help us, and there never was any doubt about our spirit of enterprise."

"in 1965 for a dramatic take-off. What Raitz had dis- covered and Captain Teddy Langton had further developed was that, if you made a business of it and organised everything well in advance, if you chartered aircraft, booking thousands of seats, and reserved blocks of bedrooms, if not entire hotels, and if you put clever advertisements in the way of people who had never thought of going abroad, you could sell them a fortnight on the Mediterranean, including aircraft, all meals and hotel, for less than the cost of the scheduled air-fare to that particular spot. With the spending power of the new technological age working people, wouldn't millions go for that? Gordon based his faith on the expansion that would come from the great mysteries of the British climate and that enormously increasing spending power of the ordinary people. In cost terms, they could have a holiday in the Mediterranean sun in a comparatively high quality hotel for less than they would be asked to pay to sit and watch the rain from a Blackpool boarding-house. Moreover, since a deposit was payable on every booking, the cash would begin to flow in the winter and the spring, just when newspapers were habitually getting in little money, and by the time we had to pay for the hotels the newspaper income would be rising again to meet the demands. We had an added advantage in being able to com- municate through our newspapers and magazines to millions of prospective clients ; in other words we could make our sales of inclusive holiday tours in the advertise- ment columns of our own newspapers, and that very likely at a time—at the beginning of the year—when these columns were not carrying their full load. This would be cross-fertilization between one area and another of the Organisation's activities, which was good economic sense."

"Meanwhile Gordon was searching for the entirely new pastures that would suit us. Away from the communica- tions business altogether, he set himself to find: (a) a growth industry (b) a business not requiring deep technical know-how (c) an operation with a cash flow that worked on a different cycle from that of newspapers (d) an industry that would employ the skills we had built up, and particularly that let us do what we were best at—selling to consumers in the market- place ; in other words, a market-orientated company."

"The first hotel to open that year was the Malibu. It was also the first project for which I would be operationally responsible. The dynamics of the situation played into Gordon’s hands. He had to deliver a completed building for me to operate. All sorts of things could therefore go wrong between the cup and the lip – things under Gordon’s control that would make life difficult for me (and it was already difficult enough)."

"In South Africa, the construction industry practically shuts down from mid-December to mid-January. If the building was not finished in time, there would be a delay of up to two months. The only guaranteed customers would arrive over this period, and missing the proposed opening date would be a disaster. If Sol and Gordon did not have the hotel ready by 5 December, Sol’s reputation would take a severe hit – as would his pockets and the confidence of his investors. Not completing the Beacon Isle on time was simply not an option."

"For several nights before the nearly 400 guests invaded, Sol hardly slept. Like the Duracell battery in the adverts, he just kept going – and bit by bit, corner by corner, things fell into place. The last thing to do was to tarmac the sloped drive from the road up to the entrance of the building. At 10pm the night before the opening, Gordon and I were astounded to see our boss wielding a rake as he smoothed out the hot, black goo right up to the front door. Finally, at midnight, just hours before opening, the hotel was ready – or, to be precise, the hotel building was ready."