Airport Experience® News - Leadership Issue 2025

Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, what trends and innovations in retail, dining, and the company’s continued growth excite you the most? First, secular trends in this market have been restored. COVID disruption is finally behind us, and passenger growth is normalizing. Inflation has been high but should start to decline. I expect 2026 and beyond to be more predictable, allowing us to be more intentional and bolder in the investments and changes we make. We have one of the best brand portfolios in the industry, including national, regional, and local brands. We’re leaning hard into grab‑and‑go offerings in our hybrid Farm to Flight Market concept, with on‑site prepared fresh foods sourced locally near each airport. We’re working with farmers and brands local to each airport, and that’s allowing us to create an experience that’s unique for the customer. From a customer‑facing technology standpoint, we’ve got a lot in the pipeline. My mentality is to test and learn quickly to help us find the most viable solutions to deploy at scale. We’re constantly looking for ways to make associates’ jobs easier. My goal is always to create the best customer experience possible. How will you continue delivering memorable travel experiences and innovative solutions without passing added costs on to guests? Our framework starts with listening to the customer. We are intentional in how we use data and consumer insights and derive personas from that. The magic is localizing those personas where we’re building, then building things very deliberately that we know customers need, want, and ultimately are willing to pay for. Most companies have dealt with disproportionate inflation, which has

now peaked, and we’re seeing a more normalized level. The challenge is not passing all of that onto the customer, but instead figuring out how to be more productive and efficient in how we deploy capital and use technology to drive productivity. The goal is to create an outcome that makes sense for us and our shareholders, but is also at a price customers are willing to pay for the value they’re getting.

My goal is to preserve the culture and standards our founders established 65 years ago. The best way is to talk about it constantly, live by it myself, and hold others accountable. We’re known for one of the best service experiences in the industry, and I’ve always believed the best way to sustain that is by taking care of associates first. They will take care of customers the same way they’re taken care of by the company. Once a year we do a formalized feedback capture. We received 2,000 comments and I’ve read every one. We also do focus groups with frontline associates to figure out what’s working and what’s not, then actively pursue improvements. The bottom line is this: when our associates are happier, they make our customers happier. What leadership framework guides how you view customers, associates, and management within Paradies Lagardère? I’ve long embraced the inverted pyramid framework, which places the customer at the top, our frontline associates just below, followed by field and corporate management, and at the bottom is where Gregg and I sit. It signifies a couple of things. One, our most important people are at the top of the pyramid. And two, it symbolizes the servant leadership mindset Gregg and I share. We want it to be clear where we see our frontline associates sitting and where we sit. “My goal is always to create the best customer experience possible.”

If you could wave a magic wand and change, improve, or modernize one thing in the industry, what would it be? One of the fundamental challenges for our industry is reimagining the classic concessions business model and adapting it to a dynamic consumer environment. Consumers will change rapidly over the next five years as they immerse themselves in AI and new technologies. We need to collectively figure out how to adjust the business model to be more agile and adaptive to consumer trends. The days of long‑term leases with the same concept just don’t work anymore. We’ve got to figure out how to accelerate that cycle and rotate concepts in a way that’s efficient for us financially, but keeps the experience tied to current customer expectations through contemporary experiences. To stay ahead, we have to keep our flywheel spinning faster from an innovation standpoint. If we’re not evolving at least as quickly as our customers, we risk falling behind. That’s why our ultimate goal is to accelerate the pace of change to stay fully aligned with customer needs.