Global Shopping Forum unites wider TR value chain

By Kevin Rozario |

Facebook’s Catherine Fitzgerald.

Facebook’s Catherine Fitzgerald.

Big social media names such as Facebook and TripAdvisor – plus a number of airports, retailers and suppliers/distributors – attended the third annual Global Shopping Forum last month in Hamburg which brought together the broader duty free and travel retail value chain in an attempt to get these stakeholders to interact more directly.

Entitled, Traveling Shoppers in Times of Digitalization, the event – organised by Eli Fel, Managing Director of Travel Blue Germany – put the emphasis on how digitalisation is radically transforming shopping in the travel industry.

The conference at the Empire Riverside Hotel in Hamburg had about 100 attendees compared to the 60 that participated last year on the topic of the Chinese traveller. This time – and in line with GSF’s tag-line ‘where travel meets shopping’ – the discussion was much more wide-ranging: how do international airports become omni-channel commercial destinations; can legacy airlines combine on-board shopping with ground touchpoints for a seamless shopping experience; and the value of mobile-first social media in connecting with travellers.

GSF Founder Eli Fel.

GSF Founder Eli Fel.

Such an ambitious range of topics was a lot to take in for the audience – most of whom were not digital natives – but the value of GSF is that it has established itself as a place for some disparate parts of the travel value chain to connect; a think-tank from which new ideas and partnerships can be incubated.

What was a lot clearer – as Fel and speakers such as Kian Gould CEO & Founder of e- commerce and digital transformation company AOE noted – was that while air traffic continues to rise, duty free and travel retail sales, last year, took a beating, dropping by -2.7% (source: Generation Research).

Airport landlords and retailers are therefore eager to harness digital to boost those flagging retail sales – but how to do that efficiently is far from clear, and a question that GSF tried to address.

THE ‘ALWAYS ON’ TRAVELLER

GSF lead pic

Today we’re never switched off.

Kicking off the day was Facebook’s Travel Client Partner, Catherine Fitzgerald who talked about connecting with people in a mobile-first, ‘always-on’ world. The idea that travellers, in particular, were always connected was a heavily-pushed theme throughout the GSF especially by technology and social media speakers.

Fitzgerald spoke of the agility of Facebook – in its short 12-year history – moving from the desktop to mobile-first platform where it derives 80% of its advertising revenue. With 1.7bn active users, access to them – and their data – is a potential goldmine for any duty free and travel retailer wanting to target by behaviour or ‘likes’.

Facebook has a trump hand in the world of digital; it owns the world’s top four apps: Facebook Messenger, Instagram, FB, and Whatsapp. Fitzgerald noted that with TV consumption decreasing, knowing which with digital channels to communicate to audiences has become an important consideration.

And for all those airports out there developing their own apps, she had some bad news: “The average smartphone user spends significantly more time on their most used app (46%) than on their next four”. The airport app – much further down the list – therefore may have little more than novelty appeal, while airline apps, at least, have important functionality in that they hold boarding pass information and thus are guaranteed to be used in the airport journey.

GSF Deubel LR

Deubel outlined the digital challenges that airports face.

Fitzgerald said that airports could send messages to FB users through their newsfeeds once they have ‘checked in’ at a terminal location and then tie up with localised beacon technologies which can direct specific retail offers to the user. However, she was unable to share any case study, when asked, of any airports and FB working together in this way.

She added: “There’s a big disconnect between the airport authorities, the airlines and the retailers who are looking to maximise both experience and sales opportunities.” This is a perennial theme in the DF&TR world, and was picked up several times during the event.

THE AIRPORT EXPERIENCE

Next on was Hamburg Airport’s Commercial Director & Head of Center Management, Lutz Deubel, who started by showing a ‘trend barometer’ about digital at airports which indicated that while beacons and apps were being implemented, most of the focus was on navigation and wayfinding, while 73% of IT investment was being directed at pax processing.

GSF HAM slide LR

How to create greater awareness along the pax journey.

Retail, it seems, is way down the pecking order. One of the problems he said was the ‘awareness dilemma, “because we still don’t know when passengers will arrive at the airport because airlines are not willing to share that data”. The competitive nature of loyalty schemes, from airlines in particular, but also DF&TR operators was another issue.

Nevertheless he discussed steps that the airport – the fifth biggest gateway in the country – was taking to develop its Passngr app in tandem with two other airports in Germany: Munich and Dusseldorf and build critical mass. Started in July, the rollout of services will be phased in, with retail and F&B part of the guidance function, and store offers also built in – plus the potential of a loyalty scheme to be added to new releases.

LOYALTY BRINGS ADVANTAGES

Wold: 'predictive analytics... this is what success is all about today'.

Wolf: ‘predictive analytics… this is what success is all about today’.

On that subject, one of the biggest loyalty operators spoke next. Miles & More Director Retail, Brigitte Wolf, discussed the multi-channel approach of the loyalty scheme, primarily targeted at Lufthansa and Swiss travellers.

She noted that the physical catalogue remained an essential part of the offer and added that selling exclusive high-end products worked very well in this channel. For example, Miles & More had a special-edition Breitling watch on Swiss for CHF7,000/$7,190, which saw huge demand.

“Passengers can go on Amazon and other platforms but they will not find this Swiss Breitling watch on any other catalogue because it’s unique for the anniversary of the launch of the airline’s Boeing 777 fleet,” she said.

Miles & More also has nine airport shops and airline shopping [renamed from inflight sales to reflect that products can now also be delivered to anywhere in the EU-28 markets].  On the vexed topic of partnering with airports Wolf said the company was working with Frankfurt and Munich airports where two pilots are in place for lounge shopping in order to leverage those passengers who tend to escape the retail offer this way.

Miles & More is retailing to pax at more touchpoints than most.

Miles & More is retailing to pax at more touchpoints than most.

As for the prized data that airlines have, Wolf commented: “We don’t just work with known analytics; we have a big department that looks at predictive analytics so we can target consumers much more accurately. This is what success is all about today and it’s the beginning of bringing together all the channels that we have in retail so that passengers can shop at their convenience at a time when they are receptive to messages.”

SOFTWARE TO SWITCH PAX ON, NOT OFF

Rene van der Laan: 'a relevant and convenient offer leads to acceptance'.

Rene van der Laan: ‘a relevant and convenient offer leads to acceptance’.

Rene van der Laan, Director Global Practice, Customer Intelligence, at SAS [not the airline but a software company] discussed the concept of the ‘loyal chameleon’ – those people who are prepared to spend but who don’t necessarily want to be identified.

His presentation followed the theme of targeting the passenger at the right moment: “a relevant and convenient offer leads to acceptance” he maintained – a simple enough idea but hard to do well when passengers are bombarded with so many messages that they switch off.

SAS analyses data – real time and contextual – to see how, when and why users interact with websites and brands, in order to build a ‘360 degree view’ of customers. Van der Laan noted that retailers were often using technology at some point along the customer journey to drive traffic into physical store rather than for online sales. “But messages to shoppers have to be appropriate and in-sync with the target consumer to be effective,” he added.

He made the interesting point that when shoppers use price comparison sites, to find say a Bluetooth speaker, airports retailers are frequently absent [he cited Capi Electronics in this example]. This is a lost opportunity if that shopper may be a regular traveller and does not see the Capi option because it was not offered.

MOBILE MARKETING

In similar vein, Michael Mauerhaff, Head of Marketing Sales for several country markets at Global Blue, the tax refund specialist, told the audience that globe shoppers like the Chinese and Americans spend, on average, about seven times more than domestic travellers, and that they were increasingly using mobile searches before shopping tax free.

He also urged airports and retailers to find out more about the habits and interests of their potential customers so that when they come to the airport these shoppers can be targeted with relevant offers or vouchers. End-to-end sales can then be measured to see how successful these types of marketing campaigns actually are.

[Part Two of the Global Shopping Forum can be found here.]

 

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