France-based duty free and travel retailer, Lagardère Travel Retail, has noted an improving traffic situation and spending per passenger at its key Paris airport locations following last year’s Paris attacks. The division has, today, also announced the completion of another distribution disposal.

Commenting, earlier this month, on its Parisian airports customer base, CEO, Dag Rasmussen, says: “Travel retail is doing OK. After the terror attacks in Paris in November, traffic had slowed down with significant decreases in the two weeks afterwards: -6% with a (previous) trend of +4%, so a -10% drop. But now it is back to a very small positive number in January.”

Rasmussen notes, however: “Our spend per passenger has always remained positive, so the sales over-performed this slight growth. Globally, while the market situation is not excellent, we are performing well.”

In France, LTR had a slight contraction of -0.4% in the final quarter of 2015 due to the decrease in traffic through its Paris outlets.

CHANGING PARIS TRAFFIC MIX

It is not clear how the traffic mix at Paris airports will settle down as it picks up during the course of 2016. Asia passengers in particular have been affected by the November attacks, but North American travellers have been compensating.

Following the mid-November downturn, December traffic for Aéroports de Paris fell by -2.8% to 7.1m passengers compared with December 2014. Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport did worse (at -3.4%) than Paris-Orly (-1.7%).

However, looking at the international components, while there was good growth from the French Overseas Territories (+4.7%) and North America (+3.4%), the Asia Pacific market [key to DF&TR spending] was down by -7.3%, while Latin America fell by -2.9%.

In January, the situation improved with a year-on-year increase of +0.9% to 6.8m. But again, while French Overseas Territories and North America were very strong at +8.2% and +6.7% respectively, Latin America and Asia Pacific remained negative at -0.1% and -3.8% respectively, with the latter decrease primarily from softening in Japan and Malaysia.

LTR will, no doubt, be keeping an eagle eye on this development and make changes to adapt if necessary.

SPANISH DISTRIBUTION BUSINESS OFFLOADED

In the meantime, the division has disposed of its Spanish press distribution business, SGEL, to Springwater Capital, a private investment firm. The activities sold represented consolidated sales of €287m/$316m and normalised recurring Ebit of approximately €8.5m/$9.35m in 2015.

Media group Lagardère [LTR’s parent], says: “This transaction represents a new step in the announced strategy to focus on travel retail’s growth businesses, especially in airports. Travel retail activities in Spain and Portugal are not included in this transaction and remain consolidated by the division.”