Airport Experience® News - Retail & Services Issue 2025

Roberts says. “These focused areas, such as our ‘Charge It’ section, are particularly popular with business travelers and younger customers. When executed thoughtfully, specialty retail within a larger store enhances the customer experience without requiring a separate footprint.” Patricia Chinander, founder and CEO of Love From USA, points out that while some specialty retail concepts do well as standalone locations, the capital expenditure can be very high, so hybrid models are often more feasible. “They provide more flexibility as brands ebb and flow with customers’ rapidly changing appetites,” she explains. Matlock sees Plenty Mercantile’s OKC location as a hybrid store because of its product mix of convenience items, essentials and mostly locally made gifts. “Hybrid stores perform well because they capture multiple audiences across one threshold, and especially for small to mid-sized airports, they make the best use of space.” Another example of a hybrid concept that’s been catching on in a big way in recent years is marketplace-style stores. “Our real point of difference has been stores like our 5,000-square-foot District Market at SFO and our award-winning, 15,000-square-foot Bowery Bay Shops at LaGuardia Airport (LGA),” WH Smith’s McOwan says. “This format allows us to feature a wide-ranging merchandise list, all of which can change and alter throughout the term. The traditional 1,000-to-1,500 square-foot store is still appropriate where needed, but a market offering the essentials alongside a great range of national and local branded products is where the real value unlock is, and one that provides the greatest range of choice to the consumer, and a better level of return to all stakeholders.” Incorporating Tech In the early post-Covid days, checkout-free shopping – most notably Amazon’s Just Walk Out stores – seemed primed to be the next big thing in airport retail, but that hasn’t exactly panned out. “Paradies Lagardère has piloted checkout free shopping using Just Walk Out technology and the results were clear: these formats underperformed,” Bisset says. “In a controlled test, we converted a Relay store at Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ) into a Just Walk Out-powered Express store. Despite identical square footage and foot traffic, sales dropped by 60 percent

Remoundos adds that specialty tech products, particularly those with recognizable brand names, are strong impulse buys and Hudson is responding accordingly. “In one North American airport, which we’ll announce soon, we’ll have a Google shop-in-shop featuring state-of-the-art electronics and new, trendy products in an experiential display.” Paradies Lagardère’s Bisset believes that shop-in-shops are “absolutely the best way” to offer specialty retail items within a travel essentials store. “Standalone specialty retail units generally struggle to break even; however, properly combined with travel essentials, gift, technology, sports and apparel shop-in-shops can add personality and broaden the appeal of travel essentials shops,” he says. “I think we’re going to see travel essentials stores continue to evolve and expand further from their news/gift roots toward hybrid units that cover multiple use clauses.” Onsite Retailers has leaned into the shop in-shop approach, when space allows, to incorporate specialty retail into the product mix. “We’ve introduced dedicated tech walls and curated displays featuring high-demand items like wireless earbuds, portable chargers, smart luggage tags and travel adapters,” Above: Food and beverage items are top sellers at travel essentials stores. Aiming to capitalize on this trend, 7-Eleven opened its first in-terminal airport location at Los Angeles International Airport earlier this year, with a food and beverage product mix that reflects the chain’s streetside locations while also meeting the needs of travelers.

Above: The Plenty Mercantile store at Will Rogers World Airport aims for more of a boutique look than the news/ gift shops of the past, with a hybrid product mix of convenience, essentials, and mostly locally made gifts and souvenirs.

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AX NEWS SEPTEMBER 2025