Millions of travellers walk past airport shops every year, with time on their hands and a wish to treat themselves. That is what makes travel retail a strategic channel for fragrance, cosmetics, wine and spirits, fashion and confectionery brands. But opening in a duty free shop is nothing like opening a high street store: the players, the formats and the rules are specific to this world.
Travel retail: the definition
Travel retail covers all retail aimed at travellers: shops in airports, stations and ports, and on board ferries, cruise ships and aircraft. There are two regimes:
- Duty free, sold tax free to travellers leaving the European Union.
- Duty paid, taxes included, for example on a flight between two EU countries.
The main categories are fragrances and cosmetics, wines and spirits, confectionery and fine food, fashion, accessories and luxury goods.
The players in travel retail
- Airport and station authorities, which grant retail spaces as concessions.
- Operators, which run the shops: large specialist groups such as Lagardère Travel Retail, Avolta, DFS and Gebr. Heinemann, as well as local operators.
- Brands, which negotiate their space in store, their activations and their exclusives with the operator.
- TFWA, the industry association, which runs the TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes every autumn and an Asia Pacific edition in Singapore.
Formats for a brand
- The gondola or brand wall: the brand’s permanent space in the shop, with its products and testers.
- The counter and podium: to highlight a launch or a hero product.
- The promotional space, or activation: a pop-up of a few weeks in the shop’s main aisle, for a launch, a season or a limited edition.
- The shop-in-shop: a fully branded space with its own furniture inside the shop.
- The mono-brand boutique, for the strongest brands.
Airport rules to know
- Double approval: the operator approves the concept against its presentation rules, then the airport authority approves it.
- Fire safety: materials must be fire rated and electrical installations compliant.
- Airside access: duty free shops sit after security. Installers need an airside pass, and materials and tools go through screening. These steps take time and must be planned early.
- Overnight installation: shops almost never close, so installation happens in short slots, often at night.
- Durability: thousands of customers a day, trolleys and suitcases. Furniture has to take the wear and still look perfect.
- Rotations: activations change often. Modular furniture reconfigures from one activation to the next and from one airport to another.
The steps of an airport activation
- Negotiate the space with the operator: location, duration, format.
- Design the concept in 3D, within the operator’s rules.
- Get approval of the concept and technical files from the operator and the airport.
- Build the furniture, fixtures and lighting, then pre-assemble and test everything in the workshop.
- Prepare access: airside passes for the installation team, delivery of materials.
- Install overnight, in a few hours, and set up lighting and screens.
- Maintain during the activation: restocking, small repairs.
- Remove, store and reuse the furniture for the next rotation.
Allow 8 to 12 weeks from brief to installation.
Succeeding in travel retail
- Be readable in three seconds: a traveller in a hurry must grasp the brand and the offer at a glance.
- Work on the lighting, which makes bottles, flacons and materials shine.
- Offer an experience: personalisation, engraving, skin diagnosis, tasting, travel retail exclusives.
- Speak to an international audience: strong visuals, short texts, several languages.
- Design for reuse from the start: well designed furniture serves several seasons.
Working with us
We design, build in our workshop and install overnight the pop-ups, gondolas, counters, shop-in-shops and luxury fixtures of travel retail brands, at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Orly and major stations, across France and Europe. Discover our travel retail design service, then tell us about your project: an English-speaking project manager will call you back within two working days.
