‘Growth is not a trend, it’s a choice’: Diageo and Mondelēz target untapped TR potential

By Naomi Chadderton | Tuesday, 29 September 2026 9:26

Diageo Global Travel and Mondelēz World Travel Retail have called on the industry to rethink how it engages travellers, arguing that low penetration rather than a lack of demand represents one of the biggest opportunities for future category growth.

Speaking at an ‘In Conversation’ breakfast event at TFWA World Exhibition & Conference this morning (29 September), Diageo Global Travel Managing Director Andrew Cowan and Mondelēz World Travel Retail Vice President & Managing Director Joost Rosmuller discussed how greater collaboration, more ambitious experiences and a deeper understanding of traveller behaviour could help turn more passengers into shoppers.

Cowan opened by challenging projections of low single-digit industry growth, pointing instead to the scale of the untapped opportunity. Of 2.3 billion international passengers annually, he said only around 230 million currently visit the liquor fixture, while more than half of those who do ultimately make a purchase.

“Growth is not a trend; it’s a choice,” he said. “We can make the choice to cause growth, and that’s where our category strategy comes from.”

Rosmuller identified a similar opportunity within confectionery, where penetration currently stands at around 8%, despite 91% of consumers snacking on a daily basis. “When I talk about 8% penetration of the category to my colleagues in domestic, they are looking at me like, ‘How is this possible?’” he said. “It’s a bit of a relevance issue, but it’s also a massive opportunity.”

With 57% of passengers currently walking past duty free, Rosmuller argued that simply increasing penetration from 8% to 9% would deliver 12.5% growth for confectionery. Once shoppers reach the fixture, conversion is around 50%.

The challenge, both agreed, is giving passengers a compelling reason to stop. “A passenger is a passenger until we cause them to become a customer,” said Cowan. “They’re not there to buy chocolate bars and bottles of spirits. They’re there to get on an airplane to go to their destination.”

For Cowan, this requires retail to become an additive part of the wider journey, built around what consumers are actually feeling and seeking at different moments. Gifting, for example, is less about the physical product than the affection behind it, while destination-exclusive products can act as a “trophy” of the journey.

Rosmuller similarly described the airport as a “unique stage for retail”, where travellers – particularly those heading on holiday – are often already in a mindset of anticipation and discovery. “This is about experience, about storytelling,” he said. “You have consumers in a mind state that our colleagues can only dream of in domestic, and that’s the opportunity.”

Both executives stressed that unlocking it requires closer collaboration between brands, retailers and airports. Cowan described this relationship as the “trinity”, with brand owners responsible for shopper insight and engagement, retailers providing the right space, positioning and communication, and airports ensuring retail is properly integrated into the passenger journey.

He pointed to Diageo’s Don Julio launch at Heathrow as an example of what can happen when that partnership becomes more ambitious. Alongside traditional retail elements, a DJ turned the activation into a party, encouraging passengers to stop, sample and engage with the tequila brand. “Going home saying, ‘I bought this bottle of tequila because it’s just you,’ is one thing,” Cowan said. “Going home saying, ‘You’ll never guess what happened to me when I was at Heathrow Airport. I had a party before I got onto the airplane,’” creates a different kind of connection. “I think we need to be brave, courageous and discontinuous in our thinking.”

Rosmuller suggested the competition for travellers’ attention now extends far beyond other brands or categories. “Our biggest competitor actually are things like Netflix [and] Instagram, because once people have passed the duty free area, that’s what they start to do,” he said. “When we do it right, we get them off Netflix and we get them interested.”

That means taking retail beyond the traditional fixture. Mondelēz has experimented with mobile carts, lower-priced “converter” displays, personalisation, limited editions and integrated physical and digital activations, while also exploring how engagement can begin before passengers arrive at the airport.

Cowan acknowledged, however, that pre-trip engagement remains an area where the industry has yet to find a consistent solution. “We have not cracked the code,” he said. “The benefit of engaging passengers before they travel is to cause that footfall increase, and we haven’t caused that.”

He argued that increasing footfall is potentially “the biggest single gift” the industry could give itself, noting that macroeconomic factors have historically had a greater impact on liquor footfall than individual activations.

Rosmuller agreed that the traveller journey needs to be viewed more broadly, encompassing airlines, media and social platforms as well as the airport itself. However, he stressed that experimentation inevitably means accepting that some ideas will fail. “We have the courage to experiment,” he said. “We see this opportunity and we do things.”

Despite the work still to be done, Cowan argued that travel retail already possesses advantages that few domestic channels can match. “We have got the best retail opportunity worldwide, bar none,” he said. “We are the only off-trade channel where you can genuinely build your brand.”

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