Airport Experience® News - Retail Issue 2026

airport, and repeated economic cycles that made value and price transparency non-negotiable rather than a nice-to have,” Fathi says. “The result is a traveler who arrives already knowing the brands they want and expecting the same value they’d find outside the airport, sometimes better. That changed how we thought about the whole store, not just what we sold but why someone would choose to buy from us rather than wait until they got home.” “Personalization and pre-order are becoming standard rather than a novelty, and the traveler behind that shift is younger than the industry’s old playbook was built for,” Fathi continues. “Gen Z and Millennials already account for the majority of airport retail spend, and Gen Z travelers are far more likely than older generations to buy luxury when they do convert, but a large share of them never enter the store at all; most of the decision now happens on social media before they’ve even reached the airport. That’s forcing a real rethink: less ‘sell them at the gate,’ more ‘reach them before they land,’” he adds.

There’s also a new generation of duty free concessionaires jumping into the fray, with independent operators like Brittany Williams Leverett, founder of Legacy Consulting Group , managing to generate more than $1 million in annual sales for three consecutive years at Melbourne Orlando International Airport (MLB)’s first duty-free concept. She also opened Palm Springs International Airport’s (PSP) first-ever duty-free retail store, Coachella Duty Free. Williams Leverett, inspired by her late aunt’s ACDBE business, learned the ins and outs of the industry on the fly, managing to network her way into the MLB and PSP concepts without an RFP at either location. Without a preconceived notion of how to manage her duty-free concepts, Williams Leverett has leaned heavily into analytics and consumer feedback to determine her inventory. “Because of my background in customer service and training and development, I’m obsessed with my team trying the products and being able to describe how things taste,” she says. “The customer experience is really

important too. You can have a cool store, but if your team doesn’t talk to anybody in the store…they might buy, but they’ll buy a lot more if you talk to them. You’d be surprised how a short conversation can shift a non-buyer to a buyer – sometimes even into a big-ticket buyer.” Williams Leverett also takes a small business approach to her pricing. “People are very price conscious – they’re going to pull up stuff and say, ‘I can get it here cheaper,’” says Williams Leverett. She is “willing to, to a degree, do some price matching, especially if it is from a reputable place.” “A lot of it is knowing the market. I feel like people don’t modify their selections based on their market,” she continues. “Palm Springs has a completely different candy setup than Melbourne does. They have $12 candy bars. Melbourne passengers would never buy $12 candy bars. But if you keep doing the same thing in every store, now you have expired product. Now you have more loss, and now you have to damage things out. We also have a whole area where we capture customer feedback in our closing emails, and that’s how we build our future orders. We pay attention to what people want and we deliver,” she says, adding that being able to pivot quickly is an advantage to the small business model. Passenger Dip One challenge for operators and airports alike remains a dip in international arrivals.. “This isn’t a global downturn, it’s a US-specific one, and that distinction changes everything about how operators should respond,” Fathi says. “Global tourism actually grew in 2025. The US didn’t share in that growth, it lost ground, driven largely by tariff disputes, tighter border and entry policies, and a real shift in sentiment, especially among Canadian travelers, but increasingly from parts of Europe and Asia too.

Left: In-store tastings and events, like this one at the Avolta-operated duty free store at Vancouver International Airport, provide experiences that translate into sales.

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AX NEWS SEPTEMBER 2026