Gebr. Heinemann today (18 October) launched its immersive ‘Experience Space’ at Copenhagen Airport (CPH), as the travel retailer builds on a corporate mission to ‘turn travel time into valuable time’.

[TRBusiness is on location for the opening at Denmark’s hub and aims to bring you further imagery and comments in due course].

Housed within the Heinemann Tax Free store located airside post-security, the Experience Space invites travellers to explore a range of interchangeable brands while discovering lift and learn technology, interactive digital screens and a digital floor alongside eye- and ear-catching visual and audible cues.

Narciso Rodriguez, Talisker Wilder Seas, Absolut Vodka and Danish labels MessyWeekend and James Ay occupy a presence within the space, echoing their connection to water and the environment.

Education plays an important role; through the aforementioned lift and learn technology, visitors can gain a deeper understanding of the brands and their respective products.

Raising the profile of Danish brands

Examples of this play through in the sustainable and philanthropic endeavours of the brands, with a £3/$3.6 donation made to ocean conservation for every bottle sold of Talisker Wilder Seas whiskey, or the knowledge that 90% of the Mazzucchelli M49 plant-based acetate, the material used to produce James Ay eyewear, can be converted to natural gasses with the remaining share turned into water and biomass.

Meanwhile, Narciso Rodriguez’s latest ‘all of me’ fragrance for women opens up its brand universe beyond the olfactory to invite visitors to taste a drink made from floral notes of rose.

On their travels of the zone, shoppers can engage with the Experience Space’s architecture in a multi-sensory and interactive manner, from seeing and hearing the flow of water when navigating the floor to gesturing its direction with a wave of the hand on the numerous digital screens that surround.

By lifting a model of a water drop, the digitals screens display useful information: from the historical role of life’s source in Denmark across its thousands of kilometres of coastline and high-quality drinking water available in the capital, to exciting projects such as underwater gardening.

Sören Borch, Director Sales Experience & Excellence at Gebr. Heinemann, said: “We promise the travellers unforgettable experiences as a part of our mission statement to turn travel time into valuable time.

“Our new ‘Experience Space’ is another proof point of how we bring our promises to the shop floor – in this case with an interactive and inspiring consumer experience that delivers a unique shopping proposition. It is multi-dimensional, agile and programmed to continuously reinvent itself to stay in touch with changing consumer expectations. After the launch in Copenhagen, there is still more to come in other locations.”

Katrin Bamler, Managing Director of Gebr. Heinemann in Copenhagen, commented: “We are very happy to present this amazing new concept to travellers. I have never seen anything like it, and I think that it offers the perfect mix of content, excitement and shopping opportunity. We share a long-standing and very trustful partnership with Copenhagen Airport and are delighted that they embarked on this new adventure with us.”

Åsa Söderberg, Head of Sales & Ecommerce at Copenhagen Airports A/S, added: “At Copenhagen Airport, we always strive to give our passengers an extraordinary experience. The new ‘Experience space’ provides new forms of interaction and inspiration between brands and customers and we are pleased Gebr. Heinemann chose Copenhagen Airport for the launch of the new concept.

“The area will focus on brands that can deliver an extraordinary experience and gives smaller local Danish brands the opportunity to reach a wider audience. Our experience shows that unique experiences and good service are closely linked with increased sales and something that passengers today expect from traditional retail.”

CPH handled 20.3 million passengers in the first nine months of 2023, according to the operator’s latest results released this month. This represents a 24% increase year-on-year.

The airport is expecting a surge of travellers during the autumn break, with more than 850,000 travellers tipped to pass through the terminals between Friday 13 October to Sunday 22 October.

A total of 2.5m travellers passed through Copenhagen Airport in September.

While routes between CPH and North American destinations in the US and Canada remained popular – New York in particular – London tops the top 10 destinations out of Copenhagen, with 158,000 passengers travelling to or from Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted Airports.