Despite the fact that it has been a challenging year for the global travel retail channel, Hershey’s Suzanne Jones says that the last year has been ‘pretty positive’ for the company, with the brands resonating with travellers all over the world ‘extremely well’.

“We’re finding new customers everywhere we go and we are finding new consumers everywhere we go, so the response has been extraordinarily positive,” says Jones.

Over the last year, the company has transitioned to become part of ‘The Hershey Experience’, which has offered it greater opportunities to bring in ‘engaging platforms to the marketplace, which has helped them drive conversion’, adds Jones.

“This year we have a lot of exciting new things that we are introducing; one of course is the ‘casual gifting box’. We’re taking our biggest established brands, our Reese’s, our Kisses, our Hershey miniatures and putting them in a box…for a perfect casual gift.

“We’re also very excited about the acquisition of barkThins. That’s a new product that is more on the health food snacking side and it’s a perfect marriage to our Brookside brand to be merchandised together.”

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