One, lets rewrite the retailer/airport/supplier business model and put consumer back in there. Write a customer oriented marketing plan, which eliminates sterile conservatism and focuses on entertaining and enthralling our customers from arrival to departure. There are lots of great ideas out there. Mumbai airport has over a kilometer of Indian art and history for passengers to peruse. At Bandaranaike Airport D uty F ree in Sri Lanka, female staffs wear saris and they welcome all customers at the front of the shop. Finding the seamless experiences , however , have eluded me on my seventy flights a year .
Staff/space ratio is important. On a recent trip in Europe I noticed during a busy period in a large duty free shop the ratio of staff to space was 1 per 100 square meters in the fashion area . Bad, really bad!
Secondly, get rid of the sameness. Same, same, same equals boring. Expand the space for and the presence of local products and/or regional strengths. Create realistic rent structures to do this. In my experience in the many airports I’ve worked , this category always grows exponentially given more space.
Recently flying through Athens international airport – which was not impressive – I was, however, very encouraged with over 50 linear meters of local food, gourmet food, local chocolate and wellness , with a further area given over to local wine.
Hands Up!
At last year’s Trinity Forum Conference , the core subject was the threat of technology on travel retail. A video was played of the launch of a Bollywood movie in Mumbai’s duty free shopping area. After the movie there was a show of hands on who was optimistic about the growth in the business we were all in – travel retail. I t was hearten ing to see that most hands in the room went up. Thank God, some of us still have faith in the future. But we need to do something meaningful about it, not just play with words or scratch the surface.
By: The Whinging Pome
email: trunblocked@gmail.com
