LS Travel Retail has invested in a head-to-toe revamp of its Aelia concept, in order to define what it hopes will be an immersive ‘retail brand experience’ for passengers.

 

Yesterday at the 23^rd ACI Europe Airport Trading Conference in Zürich, Vincent Romet (below), Chief Operating Officer at LSTR’s EMEA region, gave delegates a sneak preview of the new branding and logo (see main image) during a presentation in which he highlighted research showing that “many passengers are not happy in duty free stores”.

 

The Aelia revamp is an attempt to address this. “We want in-store experiences to be as memorable as our passengers’ trips,” he told delegates and described the use of digital “as a massive enabler” in the context of improving duty free and travel retail.

 

Speaking afterwards to TRBusiness, Romet said: “We are developing a retail brand experience that covers all services, and pays particular attention to the art of gifting which is critical, but which is very poorly done today in travel retail. It will also have a digital dimension.”

 

He added that the new concept is designed to create a seamless passenger experience, moving it from a transactional one to an emotional one.

 

MARSEILLES TEST BED

The first pilot will be at Marseilles Airport scheduled for November, with the next opening expected to be at Warsaw’s Terminal 1 early in the first quarter of next year.

 

Aelia is a core fascia within the LSTR portfolio – with stores across Europe including France, Spain, the UK, Czech Republic and Poland, while in Asia Pacific the company provides marketing, operating and stocking support to LSTR ASPAC’s projects in Hong Kong, Sydney and Singapore. Aelia’s sales were €1.1bn ($1.5bn) in 2012.

 

[A full report on the 23^rd ACI Europe Airport Trading Conference & Exhibition will appear in the May issue of TRBusiness.]