It is with great sadness that we report John Bishop, Hospitality Business’ Wellington Correspondent, writer, political veteran and father of National Party Minister Chris Bishop, has died.
John died on Friday September 13, after being rushed to ICU with a brain aneurysm earlier in the week. He passed peacefully, surrounded by his family.
John Bishop was a highly experienced and widely published travel and hospitality writer and broadcaster with a long career in journalism and public relations.
His knowledge of the Wellington cuisine scene, including Le Cordon Bleu, and the Chaine des Rotisseurs – an international gastronomy group of culinary professionals and fine dining, with a Wellington chapite, – added both insight and colour to our industry coverage. A frequent provider of candidates for the Chef Of The Month column, and a fondness for chasing fresh and interesting story angles added to his valued retinue of skills.
John’s writing, emails and correspondence were always witty and entertaining, with an easy to read, engaging style and he always had his finger on the pulse of the hotel scene in Wellington.
His travel stories have been published in Stuff Travel, the New Zealand Herald, and in LawTalk (the journal of the NZ Law Society), by the apn chain of newspapers in Queensland, Australia, and by Rotary DownUnder, (the monthly journal of the Rotary movement in Australia, NZ and the Pacific).
He has also broadcast his experiences in the Odyssey segment of Nights with Bryan Crump on Radio New Zealand.
John was often selected for media famils: by the US Travel Association to IPW in Orlando in 2015, in New Orleans in 2016 and Denver in 2018; as a guest of Malaysian Airlines to Malaysia in 2014; and he has been selected for the Maori Tourism Association’s biennial media famils in NZ in 2015 and 2017.
A past member of the Public Relations Institute of NZ, John was a past director of the NZ Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.
His career spanned radio, television, print and social media and included management experience in the aviation and tourism and travel industries, and many years writing and commenting on economics, business and politics.
He was a long time correspondent for the National Business Review, writing on aviation, tourism, economic and political matters. Editor in Chief Nevil Gibson ngibson@nbr.co.nz says…
“His knowledge and expertise in politics, economics and public policy would be unmatched. He has contributed to the National Business Review on these issues as well as on topics ranging from local government politics to the state of the legal profession. His articles and columns show strong research skills as well as a capacity to draw insights.
He was previously Director, Public Affairs for the New Zealand Tourism Board (New Zealand’s National Tourist Office) and had an extensive background in management and business development. He also worked as a business mentor.
John Stuart Bishop held a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Canterbury; management qualifications from Henley Business School in the UK, and was an Accredited Business Communicator of the IABC -International Association of Business Communicators (San Francisco).
More recently John was delighted by the daily antics and activities of his dearly beloved grandson, Jeremy, of whom he thought the world.
New Zealand journalism has lost a treasured communicator and we at Hospitality Business send our deepest sympathies to the family for their loss.
