Travel Retail Voices: an industry-wide, global perspective on Travel Retail trends

Lagardère Travel Retail has published today its first “Travel Retail Voices” report, building on more than 25 face-to-face interviews with top airport landlords and brand executives from across the globe. In the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, this report voices the views of stakeholders on a broad range of topics, and draws an unprecedented picture of the industry across all segments of activities and regions. These in-depth insights are supplemented with key findings from a quantitative online survey of 200 airports and brands, in 27 countries.

As the Travel Retail industry enters the recovery phase, Lagardère Travel Retail has leveraged its strong relationships with airport landlords and brands globally, and across three business lines, to ask 25 stakeholders about their business strategies. The series of in-depth face-to-face interviews has revealed key insights into how airports and brands plan to respond to changing consumer trends and profiles, increased digitalization or the importance of driving more sustainable business practices. The survey also covers partners’ views about changing business relationships and models, and ways to innovate in Travel Retail.

This report, the first in the Travel Retail Voices series, has been named “Shaping a stronger future together” to recognize cooperation within the industry’s ecosystem is critical to its future, as outlined in the report.

In addition to the qualitative insights partners have shared, the report reveals key findings from an online survey of nearly 200 airports and brands in 27 countries, covering the same topics as the in-depth interviews. The findings reveal the industry altogether is confident in the rebound of Travel Retail. A majority (53%) of respondents saying the channel will only be « Slightly challenged » in a post-Covid environment and airports and brands expect international travels to catch up to 2019 levels by 2024.

Commenting on the publication of the report, Dag Rasmussen, Chairman & CEO, Lagardère Travel Retail, said: “If the crisis has taught us one thing it is that strong partnerships are essential to everyone’s success. Rebuilding will be a collective effort and we must learn from our partners, be inspired by them to create the more resilient and more sustainable future of our ecosystem. We hope this report can contribute to opening a global conversation about how we shape the Travel Retail of tomorrow, and we look forward to being part of it.”

Séverine Lanthier, Chief Strategy, Development and External Communications Officer, and COO Asia, added: “As the only player covering all segments of activities in Travel Retail and with a portfolio of operations spanning 42 countries in all regions, we are in a unique position to gather insights from our business partners and share them with everyone in the industry. We feel greatly privileged and inspired to have been able to pick the brains of so many experts. As we emerge from the crisis, we hope that the Travel Retail Voices report can be a small contribution to informing partners’ and peers’ recovery strategies. Be ensured we are already working on transforming these voices and inspirations into actionable innovations.”

Travel Retail Voices is a B2B research survey into global Travel Retail trends, developed by Lagardère Travel Retail. It provides insights into landlords and brands’ attitudes and behaviors towards the current state of, and future outlook for, the Travel Retail industry around the world.

This report, “Shaping a stronger future together”, is the first in the Travel Retail Voices series. The insights are based on face-to-face interviews with 18 airport and 7 brand senior executives globally, and also on results from an online survey of 62 airports and 133 brands in 27 countries across our five regions. The interviews and surveys were conducted between November and December 2021.

• Download the “Travel Retail Voices” report