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Quest Means Business
Amazon: Systems Effectively Back Online After Global Outage; Former British Deputy Prime Minister: Interne Is At A Crossroads; Trump And Australian P.M. Albanese Sign Critical Minerals Deal; Louvre Museum Remains Closed After Priceless Jewel Heist; London Events Industry Welcomes Wave Of U.S. Investment; Luxury Train Features Transformed 1923 Pullman Coaches. Aired 4-4:45p ET
Aired October 20, 2025 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:23]
RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST, "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS": Closing bell ringing on Wall Street as the market and trading comes to an end. Hit the
gavel, sir. Come along. One. Two. Three. He tried his best to break it. He failed.
The market, just look at that. An absolute solid sea of green. Right the way through the session. We'll get into the reasons why and what force as
the program moves on. But those are the markets and these are the stories of the day.
A day of disruption: An Amazon Web Services outage. AWS brings vast swathes of the internet to a grinding halt.
Colombia is recalling its ambassador to the United States after President Trump threatened tariffs in a dispute over drug trafficking in the
Caribbean.
And sir Nick Clegg, the former Meta top executive and Deputy Prime Minister of Britain, says he's got a plan to save the internet. Sir Nick will be
with me in just a moment.
Tonight, I am live in London. It is Monday. It's October the 20th. I'm Richard Quest and I mean business.
Good evening.
Tonight, Amazon says its web services are effectively back online after an outage that caused widespread disruption. The problems began overnight,
with online services began reporting some major issues. They started to recover and then more companies experienced disruption a few hours ago.
Amazon says the issue has to do with a system that monitors how much load is being used by the network.
Now the company is the biggest provider of cloud services. Its revenue in the space exceeds that of Microsoft, Google and others. It's something like
$160-odd billion. The effects were widespread, as you might have expected, because AWS, a boring name, arguably, but an incredibly important company.
Its clients include airlines, streaming services, fast food chains, and more. So flights were delayed, payments went unprocessed, people couldn't
watch favorite shows.
Tonight -- excuse me, even the systems here at CNN were affected, forcing our producers and teams to find workarounds to bring you this program. And
the outage affected right across the globe. The website's down detector said it received 6.5 million reports related to the outage. And remember,
all of these people -- just remember that all the thousands of companies, even if you're not with AWS, perhaps your supplier or one of your
contractors or one of your subcontractors or your app, whatever, could be with AWS and that has a roller coaster domino effect to you.
Lisa Eadicicco is with me. To put this in perspective, it is the size and scale of this that's really quite remarkable.
LISA EADICICCO, CNN BUSINESS TECH EDITOR: Absolutely. I think the biggest takeaway from this is just how reliant the internet is on a small number of
companies, those major cloud providers that you mentioned, Amazon of course, being the biggest, but you also have Microsoft and Google that are
major players in this space. And it's a really difficult problem to solve because it has to do with the way the web is architected.
It's hard to move away from reliance on these big cloud providers, because doing so would probably require, based on the experts I've spoken with
about this issue, it would require some changes to the way these companies and other companies around the world do business, either by relying on more
than one cloud provider or these major providers building more data centers in different parts of the world so that if one facility encounters issues,
it can rely on a different one, so it's a difficult problem to solve.
We've been hearing from CNN readers throughout the day about how the outage has been affecting them as well, and we've heard from everything from
people having issues with their smart home devices to not being able to use tools at work like Slack and Zoom. It truly is widespread.
QUEST: Now, so the way this has been put together, though, the usage of AWS and indeed its competitors is now ubiquitous because it is a simpler way,
in a sense, of small companies getting large scale for technology. And to that extent, I mean, one assumes, obviously they had backups of the backups
of the backups and it still went wrong.
[16:05:16]
EADICICCO: Yes. So what AWS and other cloud providers do is they essentially provide a lot of the tools that businesses need to run any
aspect of their business that relies on the internet, which is pretty much almost everything. So that ranges from storage space to virtual servers to
developer tools and things like that.
And you're right in saying that these tools allow small businesses to scale in a way that they probably wouldn't have been able to before. But when
something like this happens, when these resources go offline, it really does raise questions around whether having so much reliability on one
company or one platform, the risks that that poses in the future.
QUEST: So, I suppose if there is a positive in this and it is hard to find, but if there is a positive, it seems like it wasn't nefarious. This is cock
up, not conspiracy.
EADICICCO: Right. We haven't heard anything to indicate that this has anything to do with a nefarious act or a cybersecurity issue. Like you said
earlier, this really seems like it was an issue with a system that measured the amount of load on the network based on what we know so far.
QUEST: Good to see you. Thank you.
EADICICCO: Thanks for having me.
QUEST: Now, this, as Lisa was just saying, it's a reminder of technology's central role in people's lives and the potentially adverse effects.
My next guest, Sir Nick Clegg, has written in his recent book that we have arrived at a crossroads and at a crucial moment. He talks about social
media and artificial intelligence and the various disruptions.
He believes in his book, "How to Save the Internet," that we need to forge a new relationship between technology and society. Arguably easier said
than done. Nick Clegg was President of Global Affairs at Meta, one of the top five in the company, Facebook as it used to be known. He also served as
the British Deputy Prime Minister in the first coalition government since the Second World War, and was leader of the Liberal Democrats. His book is
called "How to Save the Internet."
Sir Nick Clegg is with me now.
Nick, we'll come to the book in just a second. Let's stay with AWS. What we were just talking about is obviously we'll find out what happened and why,
but so many eggs in one basket, this coming together of technology and economies in such a way. It's very, very risky.
NICK CLEGG, FORMER PRESIDENT OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS AT META: Well, I think what -- I actually talk about this in the book, it produces these great
platforms upon which we're all dependent in different sort of levels of what they call the "tech stack," whether it's where your data is stored in
the cloud or whether it's the operating systems which basically are the bottlenecks, if you like, for the scaffolding, for the internet, whether
it's our software, whether it's our hardware, they're all produced by a very small number of very large companies.
And it's a sort of power paradox, because all of this technology is very empowering to all of us in our everyday lives. But it also aggregates an
enormous amount of power in the hands of a very small number of companies.
QUEST: Now, I'm not for one second suggesting that AWS will be taking this lightly because they won't be, nor indeed will their competitors, because
it's there, but for the grace of God go I.
But we clearly are in, I suppose, is this any different to being reliant on the -- yes, it is different, the local electricity exchange or the local --
because that's only for one region or one country. This takes out nations.
CLEGG: Yes, I think the sheer scale of these platforms, the global scale of the platforms, I worked for Meta, which has, what? Four billion human
beings using its apps and services every month. So it's -- even by the standards of the concentration of the of the world, of the railway barons
in the United States, or electricity and energy and water utilities, the sheer scale of these platforms is really quite unprecedented in industrial
history.
QUEST: And we need to address this. Now, let's talk about this because you were Deputy Prime Minister of Britain, 60-odd million people. But you go to
Meta and it's three billion users.
CLEGG: Or more.
QUEST: Or more.
CLEGG: Yes.
QUEST: Could you feel that scale?
CLEGG: I think it's quite difficult to visualize that scale. And interestingly, people used to say to me, well, you know, you're a senior
executive in one of these big social media, these global social media platforms. Didn't you have more power than when you were a Deputy Prime
Minister in the U.K. government?
Actually, I think in terms of the effect of one's decisions on the granular details of people's lives, I actually think governments still are
demonstrably more important. They raise or lower taxes, they change the curriculum of what your child is learning at school. They decide whether
your local hospital gets more funding or not.
So these are very, very powerful and big platforms, but they don't replace our politics and government in the way that is often alleged, in my view.
[16:10:05]
QUEST: One of the criticisms, and you deal with this in the book, is there are really several about social media per se. One is the algorithm that
it's designed to sort of keep us hooked. The second is the danger for teenagers and the like. And of course, the third is just the societal
damage, the echo chamber, which again, you talk of in the book.
But in each case you, you point to evidence that you say doesn't support the conclusion. And yet, we all go away with a feeling something smells.
CLEGG: Well, I try and distinguish this "something smells" sentiment from what the hard evidence is as has been looked at by academics and
researchers in numerous studies around the world. And it doesn't mean, of course, like all technology, technology can do good things, can do bad
things, can be used by good and bad people. And of course, the job of these companies should be and certainly the regulators and lawmakers too, to
minimize the bad and maximize the good.
But I do think that the pendulum swing from sort of euphoric belief that technology was only going to be a powerful good has swung quite violently
in the other direction in recent years. This so-called "tech clash" to describe all of the world's problems as a technological problem. And I
don't think the evidence bears that out at all.
So the relationship --
QUEST: How can you -- I mean, you've got the numbers. So I'm very dubious about sort of challenging you on it because you've got studies up the wazoo
from your previous job. But we all still have a feeling that these companies are using us and have little concern for the societal effect.
CLEGG: Well, I think it is certainly true to say that these are companies that are competing with each other and competing with each other for market
share. They're not charities. You shouldn't look to the leaders of them to be philosopher kings. They're not elected by any of us. So of course you
should keep what they do and say in perspective, of course, they're pursuing their own interests.
But I think there has been a tendency in recent years, every time something goes wrong, if there's an election outcome people don't like or a
referendum outcome they don't like, or strife in society about a subject, I think people are often too quick to say, it's got to be because of the
algorithm. Sure! Algorithmic systems can be very powerful and they determine what order, for instance, you see things on your social media
feed.
QUEST: But --
CLEGG: But, I think over ascribing to them a sort of power that they often don't possess, I don't think is very helpful to understanding the complex
interaction between human beings and technology.
QUEST: On this program, we interviewed the lady who wrote the book, "How to Break Up with Your Phone." And in that interview we talked about,
unfortunately, because of the AWS outage, I can't play you a clip.
CLEGG: Right.
QUEST: It's in the system. Yes, it's true, actually, it's in the system and we can't play it.
CLEGG: That's an irony.
QUEST: Absolutely! But she makes the point, it is designed for the dopamine and serotonin hit that the -- that many of the apps are designed to give
you a -- wait -- so you go back and look, have I got another message?
CLEGG: Yes.
QUEST: And because you get that, we need to be concerned about that.
CLEGG: I think it is true. Of course, anything that tries to grab your attention, whether it's the way you market your program, whether it's the
blaring headlines on tabloid newspapers, we live in a world, whether it's ads on billboards or on television, on -- I think it is all true that we've
lived, of course, always surrounded by private enterprise and others who want to grab our attention, and they can do so, which is, I think, what
you're going to say.
QUEST: Yes.
CLEGG: By way of the screen --
QUEST: For hours.
CLEGG: In a much more intimate and intense way than perhaps was the case in the past. And I definitely think particularly for kids and for teens, it's
very important you have different guardrails for teens and kids, because I definitely think we should take a precautionary approach there.
But, but, but I sometimes worry that people say, oh, shock horror, company X wants more of your attention. Well, of course it does. If someone's
producing a television program or a newspaper, they don't want to -- they don't want to repel -- you don't want to repel your viewers, you want to
engage your viewers. You want your viewers to come back tomorrow. You are going to go ahead and do it.
QUEST: So you're talking about a deal to save the internet. What is its core? Because obviously you talk about more transparency from the internet,
from the providers. And we all know that wonderful phrase, which of course is such a cliche U.S. innervates, Europe --
CLEGG: -- regulates and China imitates.
QUEST: Yes, exactly.
CLEGG: Yes, yes.
QUEST: And there's probably --
CLEGG: There is a lot of truth in that. A lot of truth, unfortunately.
QUEST: Yes --
CLEGG: Unfortunately for Europe.
QUEST: Yes, but yes -- now, let's talk about that because I want to finish. You haven't got a drink because normally I have a drinking game on this
program.
CLEGG: You didn't give me a drink.
QUEST: N0, but every time someone mentions the Draghi Report, you have to take a drink because everybody mentions it.
CLEGG: Yes.
QUEST: But nobody's really --
CLEGG: But they were not doing it.
QUEST: Exactly. So when you read or heard of seen the Draghi Report, did you take that as being the clarion call that Europe needs to get its
digital house in order?
[16:15:08]
CLEGG: Well, the Draghi Report was much wider than the digital issue. But I so happen to think that the European Union and I'm as passionate a European
as you can find in the United Kingdom if such people exist. But I think the European Union has made a catastrophic error over the last half a decade, a
decade when it comes to regulating digital services, because they spent all their time beating their chest and saying, we're going to cut the Americans
down to size, we're going to cut Silicon Valley down to size. We're going to clip the wings of these Silicon Valley companies without doing the hard
work to create, which is the point of the Draghi Report, the scale of the European market so that Europe can generate its own large tech companies in
the future, and that has been a terrible failure.
QUEST: Final -- should we have been worried when we saw the tech bros at the Inauguration, and I understand why. You want to be on the right side of
an administration particularly -- but there has to be an element of arm's length, and your former employer seemingly has bitten --
CLEGG: Well, they all have. They all have. They've all -- stampede.
QUEST: Yes. Does that worry you?
CLEGG: My own view is, I think this is what you're alluding to. Yes, I broadly agree as a sort of old fashioned liberal. There's only one thing in
a developed capitalist economy that's worse than having leading companies and politicians at each other's throats. It's having them in each other's
pockets.
Of course, there should be a sensible grown up relationship, but there should also be -- I also happen to think from the point of view of the
companies, these engineering companies, that generally history suggests that technological innovation thrives when it's kept at an arm's length
from politics.
QUEST: I thank you, sir.
CLEGG: Thank you.
QUEST: Thank you very much indeed. You'll come back again hopefully in the future.
Now, as Columbia, recalling its ambassador to the U.S. as the feud between the two nations escalate, President Trump has called his counterpart,
Gustavo Petro, a drug dealer, a drug leader. Mr. Petro accuses the U.S. of murder, in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
QUEST: President Trump says he plans to visit China early next year. The comments were made while he was hosting the Australian Prime Minister at
The White House. Now I'm not joking. We would play you some audio of the meeting if it were not for the internet issues that we were just talking
about at the beginning of the program, we can't actually play off the server.
Beijing has yet to confirm that it's actually invited Mr. Trump. The U.S. President has told reporters he was confident of striking a deal with a
trade deal with China, and signed a rare earth minerals pact with the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese.
Those minerals have become a major sticking point between Washington and Beijing.
[16:20:18]
Kevin Liptak is at the white House. Thankfully, Kevin is live. There's no server issues with Mr. Liptak. Just give him a drink every now and again,
and he's good for a lot longer.
Kevin, all right, so I didn't think -- I didn't think that the Australian Prime Minister and the U.S. President were getting on very well. But
apparently, today, they seem to be all mates.
KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, and I think the timing of this meeting couldn't be better for Mr. Albanese, as President Trump
seems freshly attuned to these questions about rare earth minerals and the vulnerability that the U.S. supply chain has with China.
Albanese came to The White House with something in hand, which was a lot of rare earth minerals that he's willing to partner with the United States on
to try and sort of decouple those supply chains. And so, in a lot of ways, he could not have planned the timing of this better.
President Trump obviously very frustrated with President Xi on adding some of these export controls, could have a serious effect on fighter jets, all
kinds of other types of products. And so I think that sort of helped grease the wheels of a fairly friendly meeting.
You know, I think there were some questions about why it took the President so long to get him here to The White House. It seems like every week we
have three world leaders here. It took a long time for this invitation to come through, but clearly it was a very friendly meeting, and the two of
them seemed to have a lot to talk about when it comes to this particular issue.
QUEST: I just want to go rogue on you, if I may, Kevin. Let's just very quickly, very quickly just do Putin. Putin-Zelensky and Ukraine. Everything
I've seen in the last 12 hours, 24 hours suggests that Putin has wormed his way back into the President's ear and is back in, if not in good books,
Zelenskyy needs to be worried.
LIPTAK: Yes, and I think Zelenskyy probably felt that in the Cabinet Room on Friday. It was quite a contentious meeting, apparently, I'm told by
European officials, very sort of acrimonious when the President was making this demand that Ukraine give up some of its land, which is something that
he talked about with Putin a day before.
Putin essentially told him that he was willing to end the war if Ukraine concedes the entire Donbas region, Russia would give up some of the small
parts of territory that it occupies in those southern regions. And in a lot of ways, this is sort of a reversal of position for President Trump.
Because, remember, it was only a month ago when he came out after meeting Zelenskyy at the U.N. and said Ukraine could actually win this war, it
could regain all of the territory that it's lost, which was, I think, unlikely in the eyes of a lot of people.
Now he seems to be zigzagging back in the other direction, and it was interesting in the meeting with Albanese today, the President tried to say,
look, I never said that Ukraine would win the war. I said it could win the war. And I don't think it's very likely.
QUEST: Kevin, as always, the man for all seasons and I'm grateful that you're on the lawn with us today.
Thank you.
Now, Colombia has recalled its ambassador to the U.S., as the two countries are feuding over drug trafficking in the Caribbean. President Trump says
he'll soon announce new tariffs on Colombia and he has accused the Colombian President, Gustavo Petro, of being an illegal drug dealer. In
return, Petro has criticized the U.S.' strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, saying some of those killed were Colombians and has accused the
U.S. of murder.
Juan Carlos Lopez of CNN en Espanol is with me from Washington. These countries, Colombia was best friends. There had been huge cooperation since
the cartel days. What's gone wrong?
JUAN CARLOS LOPEZ, CNN EN ESPANOL ANCHOR: Well, we have two leaders who, although are in opposite ends of the political spectrum, behave similarly.
They are very active on social media; Gustavo Petro is, Donald Trump is.
President Trump called -- said that Petro has a fresh mouth in his last e- mail yesterday. He couldn't even spell the name of the country right when he complained about Petro calling out the U.S. for an attack on a ship.
Now, this is a very confusing situation because you have Trump saying that a submersible, he called it a submarine, a submersible was attacked and
that two men survived. And he called them terrorists, but they were turned over to Colombia and Ecuador. So if they're terrorists, why are they being
turned over? There's already been seven attacks.
And this has faced both leaders -- now, this didn't start now, Richard. They've been at it since January and I've been looking at President Trump's
Truth Social account, but he still hasn't announced the tariffs that he said would go on Colombia.
QUEST: So, I just want to talk about the actual attacks on the boats. To my knowledge, and please feel free to absolutely put me right.
[16:25:08]
So far, there is no independent evidence that any one of those boats actually was involved in drug trafficking. Again, feel to tell me I'm
wrong.
LOPEZ: You're not wrong. There has been no evidence -- the U.S. has presented no evidence. We've been told to trust whatever the President
says, but the evidence isn't there.
Now, there was a boat that was sunk near the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic said they seized cocaine near the site. Do we know it's
from that exact attack? We don't know. Right now, it has been seven boats, at least 32 people have been killed, two have been returned, one to
Colombia and Ecuador. But so far there has been no evidence and that's part of the debate.
President Petro called out the U.S. and said that one of the boats, I think it's the one you see on the top, was stopped, one of the engines was up in
a sign of distress, and that it was attacked by U.S. forces with a missile.
So there's still no information. President Petro is calling families in Colombia to save their missing their relatives. Right now there's just a
lot of questions.
QUEST: So finally, with your expertise of the region, just help us -- give us an assessment. As the -- a lot of these countries are delicate at best
when it comes to democracy, maybe not so much in Colombia's case, but others are delicate at best.
When you get the United States being wishy-washy or even downright hostile, does that put internal politics in those countries at threat?
LOPEZ: Definitely. Petro is in the last year of his presidential term. Elections are next year, and now there are those who interpret this as
Petro getting what he wanted, having a fight with Trump, having an enemy, portraying himself as a victim and having a way to move his electorate.
It's not clear that it's going to be effective, but he has been going out with Trump for a while.
So he -- last week, he distanced himself from Nicolas Maduro. He said he hadn't recognized him as a President. But now President Trump with his
actions, is pushing him towards Maduro and is opening the door for China. This is what's happening in the region. The U.S. pushes once very close
ally as Colombia, $380 million in aid. The Colombian government spends a lot more money in the war against drugs.
But not having the U.S. as a partner is worrying a lot of people and having more an impact in the economy where it is even more.
QUEST: I'm grateful, sir. Thank you very much. The perspective is most important. Thank you.
LOPEZ: Good afternoon.
QUEST: As QUEST MEANS BUSINESS continues tonight from London, a daylight robbery at one of the world's most famous museums. So how did the robbers
get in and then steal the jewels? You couldn't write it. You couldn't make it. If you made it up, people would say it couldn't happen. Well, it did at
The Louvre.
QUEST MEANS BUSINESS.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:31:01]
QUEST: The French government has acknowledged security failings at the Louvre Museum when priceless jewelry was stolen early on Sunday morning.
Now, the museum remains closed, as experts fear the stolen items will never be recovered.
CNN Lisa Suarez reporting on how the thieves put -- pulled off this most audacious heist.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Diversion make a lot of noise over there, so over here, in this room, you can take 100 million off the wall and waltz right
out the front door.
LISA SUAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): No diversion was needed for the four masked robbers who broke into the Louvre Museum in Paris on Sunday
morning, stealing priceless French crown jewels in broad daylight, just minutes after the world's largest museum opened its doors.
The Louvre remained closed on Monday as France grappled with one question, how could the world's most visited museum be robbed with such brazen
audacity?
It was a plot that played out like a Hollywood movie. Around 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, four thieves posing as workers wearing yellow vests used a moving
elevator ladder to reach the second-floor balcony of the museum. The perpetrators then forced open a window using an angle grinder and entered
the Apollo gallery, sawing open the display location for the treasures of the French crown jewels.
As alarm bells rang, they grabbed nine of the Louvre's most valuable treasures, the priceless 19th century French crown jewels, among them, a
dazzling crown adorned with 24 sapphires, 1083 diamonds.
Also stolen, a Diamond and Sapphire necklace and a pair of earrings seen here in this painting of Queen Marie Amelie in 1836 and a glittering bow
with more than 2,000 diamonds.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Clever to use a cherry picker and a glass cutter to steal priceless, well, sentimentally priceless, jewels from the Louvre? The
fact that it was done in daylight is also astounding.
SUAREZ (voice over): It took only seven minutes for the robbers to re- emerge with nine pieces of jewelry, apparently from the same window.
GERALD DARMANIN, FRENCH JUSTICE MINISTER (through translator): What sure is we failed, because someone was able to put up an elevator truck in the open
in the streets of Paris, have people woke up for a few minutes and take priceless jewels and give France a deplorable image.
SUAREZ (voice over): Thankfully, one of the most precious items, a crown Napoleon gave his wife, Empress Eugenie, was dropped by the thieves as a
sped away on high powered scooters along the banks of the Seine.
French police says the first 48 hours are key to track down the thieves who so far are still on the run.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST: U.K.'s events industry is giving up for a spike in businesses, American tech firms expand their presence in Britain. The companies are
pledging to invest more than $200 billion into the U.K. economy in coming years, which is good news for venues like London's Excel Center, which
hosts large corporate gatherings, it just underwent a $300 million expansion.
I know Excel very well. Numerous events have I been to. But of course, particularly when QUEST MEANS BUSINESS, QMB, when we go to the World Travel
Market, where we'll be next month.
Jeremy Rees is the CEO of Excel in London. Jeremy, good to see you, sir. Thank you for coming.
In a sense, you are the capital's major conference exhibition center. Yes, you've got the QEII Centre at Westminster, but that's conferences of a few
hundred people. If you're -- if you're in the thousands, it is Excel in London.
[16:35:09]
JEREMY REES, CEO, EXCEL LONDON: I hope so, and it's not a position we take for granted. Got to work pretty hard working with major customers to make
it work for them, but we've invested hundreds of millions of pounds to make sure it is a focus of exhibitions and conference and sort of regeneration
for London.
QUEST: What makes a good conference center? I mean, my office in New York, we're next door to Jacob Javits, which is just cavernous and huge. You're
bigger.
REES: Well, it's a brilliant exhibition center.
QUEST: It is, but it's right in the center, in a sense. So, you've got Jacob Javits and you've got, of course, Excel. But what do you make a good
exhibition center?
REES: I think scale and flexibility, easy accessibility, and you've got to make sure the delegates have, you know, they get what they want. So, as an
exhibition or event organizer, you're very keen to run an efficient, commercially successful event.
So, if it's an international show, being in London is extremely important because of the accessibility. You've got Heathrow Airport, you've got
amazing Elizabeth line bringing people to the front door. But as a venue, it needs to be technologically advanced. You need to have amazing food, a
lovely environment, ideally with a light so it's a heavy mix.
QUEST: So, you have those events that are annual, WTM, ITB in Berlin, CES in Las Vegas. To those extent, they are the anchors for your business,
aren't they? In a sense, there will be, how many, there'll be X number of events that you know will take place.
How difficult and competitive is it to get the rest?
REES: Well, it's a super competitive market.
QUEST: How can you -- if you're going to be in London, you won't be in Paris. If you want to be in London, you're not going to go to Rome.
REES: Well, I think exhibitions have a choice. They could go to Barcelona or Paris, but they choose London, because there's a massively big
ecosystem.
You've got, let's say, in the tech sector, half a million people of sort of end users who are interested in buying your kit and equipment.
So, as a -- as an exhibition organizer, you want to have a huge addressable audience. So, the joy of London versus other competitive cities is that
you've got a big audience that's well versed in your marketplace, and you can sell lots of products and services.
QUEST: And are you seeing more interest? And where is it coming from?
REES: I think there's a lot of interest from the corporate market. So, we're seeing a lot of interest from America, which has been fascinating.
Over the last four or five years, we've moved from not having many American corporate events to having 60 percent of our corporate business coming out
of America.
QUEST: Why?
REES: Well, I think -- I think a lot of it is tech. So, the Salesforce, Amazon, Google, are coming across, and they're using -- London is a very
big ecosystem, and they're using it --
QUEST: Even though it's expensive, it no longer has tax free shopping, which is, people get very angry about that, don't they? And you know, the
hotels are horrendously expensive.
REES: Well, there are a lot of hotels. So, there's 180,000 hotel rooms.
And actually, if you've got a premium city, the pricing might be premium, but actually, what's been interesting is that events are coming back year
on year on year, so they are delivering amazing value. So there's this balance between price, value.
QUEST: People said that we would stop having these big events, and sometimes, when I'm at WTO, I do wonder, is it really worth all the money
to put up all those stands?
And whenever I go to a big exhibition, yes, at one point they're exciting, but there doesn't seem to be -- they don't seem to be dying.
REES: Well, the evidence would suggest that it's getting more and more compelling. There are more events. It's generating more income, and more
visitors coming, the more exhibitors coming.
And I think it's because of the ability to trade, to talk, to network, to engage. And there is definitely a point at which, I think, during the
pandemic, we thought we'd never meet again. What's the first thing we did? We got together. We wanted to engage.
QUEST: The only thing I'll say is, when walking around Excel, wear comfy shoes. I'm wearing my black brogues today, I tell you, if I spent a day
walking around Excel in these, I'll be crippled by tea time.
Jeremy, it's good to have you on the program. Thank you. Thank you so much, indeed.
Now, as you can tell, tonight, we are in London. Last week, the QUEST MEANS BUSINESS came from Bangkok, and last month, we came from Bilbao. QUEST
MEANS BUSINESS in the "WORLD OF WONDER." All in all, when you go to Northern Spain, it's a life of riding the rails of the Transcantabrico
Express, all aboard.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST (voice over): All aboard the Transcantabrico train, a lavish hotel on rails.
Over the course of eight days and seven nights, it takes passengers through the breathtaking coastline of northern Spain, through the Basque Country.
It goes all the way from Santiago de Compostela to San Sebastian and then back again.
[16:40:12]
The train has a cozy bar for a cocktail and serves dishes showcasing local favorites. The train has a cozy bar for a cocktail and serves dishes
showcasing local favorites.
As for those accommodations, they are comfy and beautiful, but it is expensive, $23,000 per couple. Of course, for those on board, this train is
about the visit and the experience not getting from A to B
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Train travel is very romantic, much nicer than being squished in an airplane or sitting at a tour bus the whole time.
QUEST (voice over): The Transcantabrico was Spain's first tourist train making its inaugural run in 1983.
GONZALO PASTOR BARAHONA, DIRECTOR OF TOURIST TRAINS, RENFE: The idea was to transform regional coaches, Pullman coaches, from the 1920s, so and with
this essence, you know, to have this personal, unique train that where you have this experience.
QUEST: It's quite an extraordinary it's a beautiful, beautiful train, isn't it?
BARAHONA: Yes, it's, I mean, in the remember, as the times of the Belle Epoque in the 1920s when we -- when to travel was experience and adventure.
It's a romantic way of traveling, I'll say.
QUEST: This is extremely important. You have to book ahead on this train, don't you, because it's quite -- it's very popular.
BARAHONA: It's fully booked most of the time. So, you have to buy tickets in advance for one or two years.
QUEST: Really?
BARAHONA: If you wanted to see us (INAUDIBLE), we have a dedicated webpage in Spanish luxury train, because most of our clients come from abroad, 80
percent of our clients and 20 percent are Spanish.
QUEST: Of course, food is incredibly important, and on the train you must have a lot of good food.
BARAHONA: The Gastronomy (PH) Express is great. When you travel with us, you will taste the different types of food of the north of Spain, from the
west country to Galicia, because we also have a kitchen and a special chef, a great chef in the train that will provide us, you know, all you want, all
you need.
QUEST (voice over): For the passengers, they're taking full advantage.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We feel like we're just eating all day, every day.
QUEST: And you're planning the next meal before you finish the last one.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just about.
QUEST (voice over): The Transcantabrico Train is a jewel of Spanish railways, elegance of the past, comfort of today.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUEST (on camera): And all yours for 23k. you can see More of my adventures in Spain's Basque country in "WORLD OF WONDER". That's QUEST MEANS BUSINESS
for tonight, whatever you're up to, I hope it's profitable.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:46:11]
(QUEST'S WORLD OF WONDER)
END
