The European Travel Retail Confederation (ETRC) has reiterated its intention to seek an amendment to joint European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) operational guidelines recommending inflight retail should not restart following the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

Back in May, the EASA and ECDC were mandated by the European Commission to jointly issue more detailed technical operational guidance for the aviation sector once it restarts after Covid-19. This followed the release of the European Commission’s guidance (13 May) on how to safely resume travel and reboot Europe’s tourism in 2020 and beyond.

Speaking during a recent virtual briefing, Julie Lassaigne, Secretary General, ETRC said: “We remain very committed to seeing the guidelines amended, because we believe that particular recommendation is not justified if the right conditions are taken and the right protocols are in place to ensure the service can be performed safely.”

She added: “We have already started talking to the Airlines for Europe and Airlines Catering Associations and they are both really interested in partnering with us to make a joint call, probably after the summer.

“Once the situation has settled, we can return to the Commission confidently and say we have seen that the right protocols are in place, passengers are happy and safe to travel and that we would like to bring forward for consideration the amendment of the guidelines to remove the opposition to inflight duty free sales.”

CONFIDENCE IS KEY

Her words were echoed by newly re-elected ETRC President Nigel Keal who believes the association must bide its time before seeking the amendment.

He said: “It’s more about how confident passengers become in the whole experience of starting to fly again and then how confident the airlines and their staff are to undertake inflight sales.

“This is why we didn’t jump straight into urging them to look at this again. We generally believed things needed to settle down a bit and that we needed to get people on flights first and feeling comfortable with flying again before pushing this.”

Keal, was also keen to point out that the EASA and ECDC guidelines are only recommendations and that he did not believe every airline would adhere to them.

“People may well jump on an airline within a week or a month and see it is providing duty free. Cabin crew may not be walking along isles with a trolley, but may well be delivering products to seats.

“In summary, airlines can choose to ignore the guidelines, but I think it will be better if we can get that change. We will manage to do this. It is just a question of whether this happens in weeks or months.”

Regarding the EASA guidelines on inflight retail Lassaigne added: “We know as a fact that some airlines have decided not to follow them completely because they believe they can provide this kind of onboard and inflight service in a perfectly safe way which inspire confidence among passengers.”

Reflecting on the Covid-19 outbreak and its impact on the Association, Keal revealed the ETRC has been forced to up its game, rise to the challenge and change its direction on previous plans. “We have had to look commercially in terms of how much our revenues and costs are. We want to be here at the end of August and our members do as well.

“We were running weekly forecasts to determine how much money we had to do this and that. It is important to emphasise that the national associations, confederation members and retailers have been absolutely fantastic.”

While ETRC has not allocated all its time and effort into mitigating against the impact of Covid-19, responding to the pandemic has been priority.

Keal explained: “The immediate response was to ensure we were heard by European government when it came to financial support for our part of the business.

“We sent many letters asking for liquidity and financial support for the industry. This was undertaken where appropriate through our memberships.”

IMPROVED COMMUNICATION

Communication with all associations has significantly improved during the pandemic. “We are all sharing the woes, but also the positives that are out there.”

Lobbying on how to restart the business was another area of focus during the pandemic. “It was very clear early on that airports and governments were going off in different directions with their own localised way of restarting business in airports.

“In April, we published Best Practice guidelines with recommendations on safety protocols. We managed to get that into the EU Commission and EU members states.

“This happened really quickly, which enabled ETRC to successfully lobby EASA and ECDC. These organisations were jointly responsible for preparing the guidelines on behalf of the EU Commission and member states on how to restart the aviation business in particular,” Keal said.

The lobbying process was anything but easy, but ultimately went to plan, indicated Lassaigne. “Initially, the Commission and member states had doubts about reopening non-essential services at airports. It was all about limiting interaction between staff and passengers.

“We engaged really hard and really early and eventually convinced member states that the shops were completely part of the airport infrastructure and that the Association was actually trying to help social/physical distancing.”

Ultimately, thanks to the protocols it devised early on, ETRC convinced the European Commission and member states that reopening airport shops at the same time as air travel was the right thing to do and could be achieved safely.

Another element ETRC had to consider was how to boost the recovery and create more opportunities for DF&TR to grow.

Lobbying for the opening of arrivals duty free shops at European Airports was deemed one way of spearheading the recovery, according to Keal, who acknowledged the challenges associated with the campaign. “In terms of hurdles and difficulties there are two. One, is that unanimity is required between all members states and it is never easy to get everyone to agree on something.

“The second difficulty is that this sits in the office of The Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union, which does not view this as priority.”

POWERFUL BACKING

The first point of attack was obtaining backing from the four big retailers (Dufry, Gebr. Heinemann, ARI and Lagardère Travel Retail ). Keal said: “We held discussions with the CEOs of the four big European retailers and they are fully aligned.”

Obtaining the backing of ACI Europe was another significant boot, emphasised Lassaigne. “We wanted to ensure ACI Europe was fully on board with the idea [of arrivals duty free in European airports] as obviously this would hugely benefit airport revenues moving forward.

“We are now confident ACI is fully aligned and will support us and carry a bigger voice towards the Commission and member states.”

Reaching out to local governments, with the support of local retailers, national associations and airports is the next step. The voice of airports is particularly significant as they can present figures to governments. These will outline the ‘potentially life-changing impact’ of arrivals duty free shops on revenue and how the stores can facilitate the recovery from Covid-19.

“This is going to start any moment now. There is a sense of urgency in that campaign,” Lassaigne emphasised. “We see this as kind of a one-off opportunity, where maybe all the stars are aligned for us to go back to the Commission and member states and say ‘it’s Covid-19 and the long-term recovery’. We can also remind them of sustainability and environmental concerns which play in favour of the arrivals shops.”

In the meantime, ETRC will undertake an Economic Impact Study to strengthen its case for arrivals duty free shops in EU airports.  This study will provide the Association with solid data and robust figures to present to the Commission and member states.

Lassaigne (pictured left) said: “It is not enough to have nice words and ideas. We need to demonstrate the potential benefits and effects of such a change of legislation in the future.”

The implementation of arrivals duty free stores in the United Kingdom would certainly strengthen ETRC’s push for arrivals duty free stores in European airports.

Keal explained: “When it comes specifically to the UK, the HM Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs closed the public consultation in May. The consultation was launched to obtain evidence and views on the potential return of tax and duty free sales between the UK and EU following Brexit.

“What we do know for a fact is that the UK government is seriously considering arrivals duty free in the UK. It has been in the consultation and various members have requested it.

“As of today, an official decision on all the regulations they will re-write or implement as far as UK duty free is concerned will be revealed in September. We think arrivals duty free could be in there.”

As reported, Britain left the EU on 31 January 2020. The transition period is due to run until 31 December, during which time the rules stay the same regarding duty free. As the end of the transition period draws closer, ETRC realises it must remain focused on Brexit.

Keal said: “Although we had six months not really talking about Brexit, the end of the year is looming. In terms of our position on Brexit from an EU standpoint, there will not be any obstacles when it comes to [the return of] duty free.”

DIGITAL LABELLING PLATFORM

Meanwhile, ETRC and the Tax Free World Association have launched the second phase of the new DF&TR digital labelling platform in February.

As reported in December 2018, ETRC and Gebr. Heinemann hosted a live test of the digital labelling platform at Hamburg Airport.

This followed an ETRC-hosted cocktail at the European Parliament in Brussels in July 2018, which provided travel retail suppliers, Board members, EU parliamentarians and Commission officials the chance to test the digital solution.

Since then, the pilot project has gained growing support within travel retail and EU circles.

“We had a meeting with the TFWA in Paris, which has kindly agreed to support us before the lockdown. This was also attended by suppliers,” Lassaigne recalled.

“The objective now is to build a website which passengers can access. This will include a barcode reader, so they can scan barcodes and have access to product information in several languages.”

Covid-19 may have changed the dynamics and certain parameters of the project, but the ETRC and TFWA are confident the website, which will include some of the products suppliers have agreed to enter onto the platform, will complete around October.

“We will present the website and the work we have been doing to the European Commission in autumn. The aim is to obtain some sort of official recognition that this is the way forward for travel and that digital labelling will be accepted as a way of providing information to consumers in travel retail.”

She concluded: “This is an important project, as the European Commission with come up with new proposals on the labelling of products in Europe.”