Paris-based LS Travel Retail – part of Lagardère Services – is preparing to launch two innovative concepts with brand partners this autumn that will both be firsts for the duty free and travel retail channel.

 

In a bid to become more differentiated from its competitors, LSTR has decided to develop some specialist and one-off retail offers designed to capture the imagination of the traveller.

 

Speaking to TRBusiness, Chairman and CEO of Lagardère Services, Dag Rasmussen (below), says: “With Moët Hennessy, and this is more on the luxury side, we’re opening Les Caves Particulières which is a multi-sensory concept built around liquor… a project we’ve been working on for many years. There will be sound showers and you will experience certain smells and be able to have tastings… it will be something very exclusive.”

 

The concept is scheduled to launch in September along with a Burberry Beauty Box – another first for DF&TR which is currently planned to open in the final quarter in Terminal 2F of Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.

 

Burberry Beauty Box is the British fashion brand’s nod to the beauty segment – which it took in-house in April 2013 – and there is only one of these retail units in the world, in London’s Covent Garden (see main image). It is a concept which mixes fashion and beauty.

 

NEW IDEAS & SURPRISES

“We’re trying to really surprise the customers and partner landlords by encouraging partner brands to come up with new ideas in order to make travel retail different,” says Rasmussen.

 

LSTR is planning growth across all three of its core businesses: duty free and luxury, travel essentials and foodservice which, by 2016, are estimated to have sales shares of 45%, 40% and 15% (from 2011’s 40%, 55% and 5%) respectively. This change in weight indicates that the DF&TR component will be the driving force led by more innovative concepts.

 

[To read the full 5-page interview with Dag Rasmussen, see the August issue of TRBusiness, out soon.]