JTI (Japan Tobacco International) won the ‘Best Supplier of the Year 2012’ Frontier Award at the annual event held at Cannes’ Martinez Hotel last week.

In a statement, JTI said: “The award highlights the many initiatives JTI has taken to support its tobacco brands in duty free stores. Most of all, it describes in detail the success of the pioneering strategy developed to help grow cross-category sales in duty free.

“This successfully demonstrates how tobacco products as a whole can benefit the entire tax and duty free industry through their ability to drive footfall into the store. Increased footfall leads to increase more sales and additional purchases.”

Adding his comments, David Francis, GM and VP of JTI Worldwide Duty Free (WWDF) said: “For some time now travel retailers have acknowledged that tobacco is probably the most effective footfall generator in the entire portfolio of products. What we’ve done is to design a proven strategy for converting that footfall into consumer purchasing, right across the store’s range of core products.”