In the second part of an extended interview analysing ‘The Power of Data’ in travel retail ahead of this year’s Global Shopping Forum (GSF), Björn Olsson, Senior Vice President, Center Management at Vienna International Airport discusses how improved data mapping can aid decision making for airports.

With less than eight weeks to go until this year’s Global Shopping Forum, momentum surrounding the conversation of data and it’s future role in shaping commercial decisions at airports is gathering pace.

At the time TRBusiness filed this report, confirmed speakers for this year’s event include Raoul Spanger, Executive Director, Gebr. Heinemann; Sarah Quinlan, Senior Vice President Market Insights, Mastercard Worldwide; and Christian Bärwind, Industry Leader Retail, Google.

A diverse lineup from the operator, retailer and supply spectrum are also set to attend, including Hugo Boss, Swarovski, Munich Airport, Frankfurt Airport, Baltona, Dufry (Portugal), Value Retail, McArthur Glen and more (For the full speaker lineup and preliminary agenda, click here).

BUILDING BLOCKS TO PARTNERSHIP

For those in the retail and airport sector, an enigma continues to surround the most proficient way of mapping data to aid decision making, which in turn, can help to maximise store footfall, dwell time, penetration and spending.

According to Olsson, access to an efficient data ‘toolkit’ could help operators implement more creative approaches to disrupting commercial passenger zones in the long term.

Airports, he says, can be pretty generic and similar in their decision making approaches when it comes to data, at times veering towards ‘protective’ or ‘obvious’ strategies that preserve existing returns rather than focusing on creativity within the ‘spirit’ of the environment.

“Knowledge will maybe improve decision making; non-aviation incomes get more and more important for all airports as you need to do a lot of incentive programmes every year to ensure you have sustainable growth within the airline industry,” he points out.

As TRBusiness has noted in recent months, Budapest Airport’s tie-up with Heinemann Duty Free and Wizz Air on the ‘BARTA’ (Brands, Airlines, Retailers, Technology Providers, and Airports) initiative, while embryonic in nature, has nonetheless given credence to the idea of more complementary partnerships between aviation stakeholders.

As exclusively reported, the Heinemann-Wizz deal has the potential to generate €800,000 ($895,000) in additional Wizz Air Café onboard sales alone.

This is not to mention the possibility of increasing Heinemann and Bud’s respective revenues by leveraging aformentioned footfall, penetration and conversion levels when the live test trial begins later this year (click here for the report and see the June print issue of TRBusiness for the full story).

Olsson says that while Vienna does not currently have a partnership of this nature, it has ‘deep discussions’ with flag carrier Austrian Airlines to determine better ways of working in partnership.

“In many cases today you are trying to sell the same perfume or deo-stick (deodorant) onboard as you are trying to sell instore. Heinemann has a more diverse offer in the physical store in the airport, but we (industry stakeholders) are trying in many cases to drive our businesses within boxes – it needs to be a diversification.”

However, Olsson admits that sharing the spoils of the profits has not always been easy as he points to examples of attempted collaboration in Europe between operators and airlines. Unsurprisingly, identifying the ‘perfect model’ to solve the equation is not clear cut, he continues.

MONETISING DATA

Advances in technology meanwhile offer airports real opportunity to monetise the data they hold so valuable and as reported previously (see part one of ‘The Power of Data’) Vienna Airport is working on a robust strategy regarding data management.

“What we have at the moment is cameras, heat maps and counters so we know the (passenger) flows perfectly; we know a bit about how they behave, which airlines they fly with, and transaction level data when it comes to the parking business,” comments Olsson.

“We receive a lot from retail and F&B also but we receive transaction data and no personal data. What we are working on at the moment is more of a CRM initiative to put all this data together and try to benchmark what the value of it is.”

Despite the obvious potential, he does admit to TRBusiness a certain wariness when it comes to translating the data’s raw potential into a personalised form that amounts to the market value – or investment value – he wishes to achieve.

“We have so much data, but there are not so many airports at the moment that have full control of the data in one box,” he notes.

At present, he continues, there is no one person responsible for the airport’s overriding data strategy in terms of capturing and analysing the nature of the data. Instead, decisions surrounding curation requests are currently made at management level.

FOSTERING A ‘SINK OR SWIM’ APPROACH

Developing the importance of data management, Dr. Eli Fel, Founder and Honorary Chairman, Global Shopping Forum and Managing Director of Travel Blue Germany explains to TRBusiness that firms’ ill-equipped to handle the rigorous demands of interpreting data will eventually fall short.

“Companies who do not have a clear data strategy will lose market share and that’s for every participant in our industry – as simple as that. This is what the Global Shopping Forum will focus on this year – cases, tools and solutions.

“I am also hoping to bring in some solution providers so we can really see and work with those tools. The problem at the moment is data analysis is more in the IT department, but it should be in the management area.

“This is something we want to evaluate and learn from together at The Global Shopping Forum to take ideas on how to capture activity data, conversion data… how to work with photo and video data. There is so much data we can gather, but the question is what data, for what purpose, and what value.”

Global Shopping Forum 2017 is in cooperation with Vienna International Airport and Travel Blue.

The event, which takes place at the Ritz Carlton on 16 November, is sponsored by Global Blue and Mastercard with support from Counter Intelligence Retail and Airport Dynamics TV.

TRBusiness is the event’s official media partner.