The travel retail industry keeps asking the same question: What does a truly great travel retail experience look like? The problem is that it is the wrong question.
It is a popular question at conferences and in presentations. It sounds strategic. It suggests there is a benchmark waiting to be discovered. But the premise is flawed because there is no single answer. Because travel retail is not a single environment.
No two airports function in the same way. The traveller moving through Heathrow Terminal 5 is not the same as the one passing through Milan Malpensa Airport. Even when the same person travels between them, their behaviour changes. Time pressure changes. Expectations change. State of mind changes.
What does a truly great travel retail experience look like? The problem is that it is the wrong question
The same applies globally. A store concept that works in John F. Kennedy International Airport may struggle in Shanghai Pudong International Airport. An approach designed for a global hub such as Hamad International Airport will not translate to a regional environment like Kansas City International Airport.
The differences are structural: The passenger mix, dwell time, travel purpose, cultural expectations, and ultimately the quality and quantity of traffic moving through the airport. Because that is what determines whether certain retail concepts are actually sustainable. These variables shape behaviour long before a traveller enters a store.
Despite these differences, the travel retail industry too often pursues a universal model of excellence. People benchmark the most famous airports, or seek to replicate the same store concepts and roll out the same assortments across continents.
The result is familiarity, but rarely differentiation. And in a market where shopper engagement is at a premium, familiarity can be very dangerous. When airports and retailers measure themselves only against other airports, they risk creating false targets. Success becomes defined by imitation rather than relevance. And imitation rarely produces strong retail performance.
People benchmark the most famous airports, or seek to replicate the same store concepts
This is particularly visible in the debate around monobrand and multibrand stores, which I wrote about last week. Both formats can perform extremely well. Both have clear strategic roles. But neither works everywhere. In the right location, a mono-brand environment can create immersion and deepen loyalty. In the wrong one, it limits choice and suppresses conversion. Multibrand retail can offer discovery and efficiency. But without careful curation it becomes generic.
The format itself is not the answer. The context is.
The industry often asks: What do travellers want? The more useful question is: What do our travellers want?
Every airport trinity has access to the data required to answer this: Passenger nationality, trip purpose, dwell time, spending patterns. Used correctly, these signals should shape the entire commercial strategy. But that requires the trinity to be more than words. It requires real collaboration and transparency.
Used correctly, these signals should shape the entire commercial strategy. But that requires the trinity to be more than words. It requires real collaboration and transparency.
Once the proposition is defined, the work becomes operational. We must design the space around how travellers actually move. Train staff to respond to the expectations of the specific audience they will meet. Measure performance continuously in the real environment and adapt. Because the real test of any strategy is what actually happens on the shop floor between staff and travellers. Because even the most carefully designed strategy must eventually pass the same test: the behaviour of real travellers moving through a real airport.
There is no universal blueprint for travel retail. No single store design. No single brand mix. No single experience that can be replicated everywhere. But every airport has the potential to create something better than a template; an experience designed specifically for the travellers passing through its doors.
The perfect travel retail experience does not exist. The right one does.