Travel retail is very good at talking about what it does well.
That is not arrogance. It is human nature. We invest time, money, and energy into the things we believe are our strengths, so of course those are the things we want to highlight.
But shoppers do not experience our businesses through our PowerPoint slides. They experience them through friction, confusion, inconsistency, and missed moments. And while we are busy celebrating what we think we do well, they are quietly noticing where we fall short, because in the modern world, good is a baseline, not a differentiator.
Brilliance, on the other hand, is created by confronting uncomfortable truths.
Shoppers do not experience our businesses through our PowerPoint slides. They experience them through friction, confusion, inconsistency, and missed moments
As an industry, we rarely focus sustained attention on the areas where we are weak. Data sharing, for example, remains fragmented. Too often we have all sat in a conference and heard business leaders agree that we must “break down silos” of data. The phrase has come to mean nothing. They all say they are willing to act; but no one will have the conversation about how it works in practice.
The same dynamic plays out inside individual businesses.
We tend to overlook the small details that quietly erode performance because we are too busy showcasing the areas that already work. The friction points are familiar, ingrained, and therefore easy to normalise. Over time, they become invisible to those closest to them.
We have all walked through a travel retail store and seen staff present, but disengaged, due to slow customer flow or an early hour. There is no doubt that these staff have been given the knowledge to do their job on paper. But putting people in the store is not the same as preparing frontline staff.
A staff member loitering without engaging, with either shopper or product, is meeting the required shopper to staff ratio for a simple analysis. They can answer a question if asked. But if they cannot assess and deliver the service a shopper wants, then they are not delivering anything worthwhile.
What is working on paper does not always translate on the shop floor. And that means it will not translate into sales.
We see this every day as an industry, when we congratulate ourselves for rising sales. But those sales are rising slower than passenger growth. We are not keeping up, or growing, we are falling behind. And we do not seem interested in why.
What is working on paper does not always translate on the shop floor. And that means it will not translate into sales.
This is precisely why fresh perspective matters.
Allowing someone else to look at your business, and look at it properly, critically, and without emotional attachment, can be uncomfortable. They will see things you no longer notice. They will ask questions you stopped asking years ago.
This happens on a macro level in the industry. All too often we dismiss criticism of travel retail as people “not understanding the industry”. But they are more like our customers than we are. Maybe it is us who does not understand what is being asked of us.
If we are serious about progress, we need to ask harder questions; of ourselves and of each other. What are we not doing well? Why not? What are we avoiding because it is uncomfortable, complex, or politically inconvenient?
And most importantly: what are we prepared to do about it?
If we are serious about progress, we need to ask harder questions; of ourselves and of each other. What are we avoiding because it is uncomfortable, complex, or politically inconvenient?
A handful of difficult conversations could be enough to unlock meaningful change. And paradoxically, they may be the very thing that gives us something genuinely new, and credible, to talk about doing well.
Travel retail does not need louder celebration. It needs sharper self-awareness.
And perhaps, a little more honesty than feels comfortable.