IS Duty Free at JFK Terminal 1.

International Shoppes is building out its business in a strategic and meaningful way by actively pursuing airport tenders across the US, navigating the shift to beauty and leveraging longer concession contracts to help navigate the impact of rising prices.

The company is focused on cementing and strengthening its footprint in US airports, having ended 2024 on a high note by expanding in George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) in Houston, Texas, with a new duty free store within the Terminal D-West Pier.

It marks part of a programme of a handful of new stores coming online in H1 2025, which will build on the company’s existing footprint at JFK International Airport in New York; Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport; Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia; and Bradley International Airport in Connecticut.

“We had a successful 2024,” Co-CEO Matthew Greenbaum told TRBusiness. “We met or exceeded all our internal forecasts.”

It’s a commendable achievement considering price pressures from all angles. “Costs of doing business at the airport have gone up tremendously,” commented Greenbaum. “There is only so much you can pass onto the customer, and I think the customer has reached a point of saturation and we are feeling those price pressures.”

Matthew Greenbaum, Co-CEO, International Shoppes.

Navigating rising prices

Fellow Co-CEO Scott Halpern added that geopolitical issues*, such as conflicts in the Middle East and Russia/Ukraine, add another layer of complexity in terms of traffic flow. Plus, there’s the slower-than-expected recovery in the number of Chinese passengers.

He said: “Here we are in 2025 and there’s not a whole lot that has changed since the summer of 2021. So that’s definitely a challenge for us as well.”

Halpern hopes the appetite and desire to travel will grow this year as situations “inch towards a resolve”.

Operators offering longer concession contracts are helping to offset rising prices.

“It seems like a lot of airport developers and airport owners understand the challenges that we are all facing and, for all the RFPs that we see coming out in the past year, year-and-a-half, we see term lengths that are a bit longer than they have been historically,” said Greenbaum.

“I understand that to be to account for that exact problem. They know that the costs of admission are going to be really high, the cost to build out the stores are going to be really high so in turn they are offering operators the opportunity for a bit of a longer runway to get their costs out and try to make a few dollars.

“The airports seem to understand what’s happening, so I guess that’s the accommodation they are coming to in order to get operators interested in developing spaces in their programmes. Now we are seeing terms of 10 years to up to 20 years so it’s a big difference, but from our perspective it is necessary to make these investments work out for us in a meaningful way.”

Marrying meaningful brands to spaces

Developing supplier and brand partnerships is set to be a big part of the development plan in 2025 and beyond.

“We’re going-to-market on things that the airport developers that we partner with are looking for,” explained Greenbaum. “And a lot of that is meaningful brands and trying to marry those brands to the right spaces so it’s just a function of those opportunities we think are viable out there and the vision from those developers to find the right brands to fill those halls. I think we are coming to the table with a lot of great options.”

Duty free shop fascia at George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

All of this is underpinned by a deep understanding of the consumer mindset.

“We want to make sure that consumers feel at ease to shop in our stores,” said Halpern. “So you will have the super high-end luxury to the middle of the road luxury, but we really try to rate a programme that is going to touch upon everybody.”

He added: “You can’t just have the super luxe, otherwise you are going to alienate others. The rents are high so you have to make sure that you are meeting the needs of the consumer. You can sell a lot more handbags at $200 than you will at $5,000 but there are a lot more consumers that are able to enter that price point, of $200-500 than there are  at $5,000+.”

*Comments shared prior to US President Donald J. Trump’s imposition of tariffs in early April.

To read more from International Shoppes, click here.