Lagardère Travel Retail/Aelia has seen seen sales jump 10% at its Avancorpo flagship store in Rome Fiumicino Airport over the course of its Chinese New Year campaign, whilst its WeChat digital in-store animation ‘dramatically boosted’ the average basket of Chinese passengers.

 

Lagardère (Aelia) has been able to target Chinese passengers at numerous touchpoints in their journey through its omnichannel strategy at Rome Fiumicino Airport to celebrate Year of The Pig.

 

The campaign will continue to run until 27 February, but already the retailer can reveal that in the first three weeks it has seen ‘encouraging results’ with sales to Chinese passengers increasing by 10% in the flagship store.

 

Lagardère Travel Retail’s strategy at Rome Fiumicino Airport included offering promotions through different channels, as well as digital components instore. The retailer’s objective was to connect with passengers at the time they planned their trip, when they arrived at the airport and when they departed.

 

PRE-TRIP TARGETING

For pre-trip targeting, Lagardère Travel Retail collaborated with Chinese price comparison app, Jessica’s Secret, to create two Chinese New Year promotion coupons.

 

Jessica’s Secret app users received a 10% discount with a minimum purchase of €360 ($406) in the Aelia Duty Free store from 29th of January to the 15th of February, covering the peak CNY travelling season.

 

During the same period, Lagardère Travel Retail also partnered with Aeroporti de Roma (ADR) to send two retail promotion coupons through the airport’s free WiFi.

 

When connecting to the WiFi through their mobile devices, passengers were offered two Aelia Duty Free Chinese New Year coupons. They could then use a screenshot of the page when making purchases instore.

 

WECHAT RED POCKETS PROMOTION

Inside the Aelia store itself, a film celebrating Chinese New Year was projected on to a giant LED screen above the Avancorpo flagship store entrance, featuring greeting messages in Mandarin and English to welcome Chinese passengers.

 

It also invited them to participate in a WeChat digital game in the store. In addition, the more than 1,800sq m of the flagship store was decorated with a hundred traditional red Chinese lanterns that created a festive atmosphere.

 

Following the success of last year’s WeChat red pockets promotion, Lagardère Travel Retail renewed the virtual red pocket digital treasure hunt using WeChat.

 

Players scanned a QR code with WeChat to start the game, then were able to point their smartphone camera at different red pocket spots scattered throughout the store. They had two chances to collect coupons and needed to choose one for their purchases.

 

Aelia Duty Free enlarged the scope of the promotion this year, including four stores covering both extra-Schengen and Schengen areas; only the flagship store was involved in 2018.