Introduction: ATÜ Duty Free President and CEO Ersan Arcan talks candidly about the opportunities represented by luxury categories today and about the challenges of attracting the consumer of tomorrow into airport stores.
“Customers are still willing to spend, but they are becoming more selective about where they spend and what they consider worth investing in.” That’s the considered view of ATÜ Duty Free President and CEO Ersan Arcan about shopper attitudes to the luxury goods market in travel retail today.
The Turkish company, a subsidiary of TAV Airports and Unifree Duty Free/Gebr. Heinemann, is among Europe’s biggest luxury travel retailers with a network that spans major airports in its homeland and others in the nearby region.
Amid softness in the high-end luxury sector in certain markets, Arcan says at global level the category is undergoing “a period of recalibration”, and cannot remain immune to geopolitical developments, changing travel patterns and mixed consumer confidence.
“However,” he says, “we would describe luxury today as evolving rather than simply slowing down.
“At ATÜ, our focus has always been on creating a point of difference through the way we curate our assortment and, equally importantly, through the service and experience we provide. We want our customers to leave our stores feeling their time with us was well spent, whether they made a major luxury purchase or simply discovered something new.
“We continue to see that when the right product, strong service and a relevant retail experience come together, customers respond positively, demonstrating the resilience of luxury travel retail.”
While passenger profiles and traffic patterns can change amid geopolitical turbulence, new resilient customer segments are continuously emerging, notes Arcan.
“Istanbul Airport’s growing position as a major international hub, together with the continuous expansion of direct destinations, gives us exposure to an increasingly diverse and dynamic customer base,” he adds.
Elaborating on how the audience is changing, he highlights ‘enduring luxury’ as an important dynamic.
“Customers are becoming increasingly thoughtful about the pieces they buy. Quiet luxury and timeless products that can remain relevant beyond a particular season are becoming more important.
“This does not mean trends have disappeared. Far from it. But we need to distinguish between a short-lived trend and a genuine shift in consumer behaviour, and be agile enough to respond when we see that shift happening.”
For ATÜ Duty Free, this means tapping into the demands of key customer groups at its largest locations, Istanbul and Antalya airports. In the former, Turkish and Russian travellers remain key, alongside a growing base from the GCC, Central Asia, Europe and other long-haul transit routes.
In Antalya, alongside Russian travellers, European and regional leisure guests represent a vital luxury demographic.
Arcan says: “Istanbul requires a much broader and more diverse assortment because of the nature of the airport and its passenger mix. As Istanbul continues to develop as a global hub, we are serving customers from many different markets, each with different expectations and shopping behaviours.
“This is where our experience becomes extremely valuable. Over the years we have developed a very detailed understanding of our key nationalities, the brands they prefer, the categories they respond to, their product preferences and even their sizing requirements.
“For us, the objective is therefore not simply to offer the widest possible assortment, but the most relevant one. We combine historical performance, current customer behaviour and the commercial judgement of our teams to tailor the offer to each location.
“Antalya and Istanbul should not look identical because their customers are not identical.”
Antalya Airport, with its vast Terminal 2 duty-free offer, in which luxury plays a major role, is especially important for the retailer, which began operations there last year.
“Antalya is a market that we have followed very closely for many years,” says Arcan. “To now be operating there ourselves is an important milestone for us and, from a commercial perspective, an extremely exciting development.
“What makes Antalya especially interesting is that it is not simply another location added to our portfolio. It gives us the opportunity to apply our luxury retail experience to a market with a very distinctive passenger profile and strong luxury potential.
“We are continuing to develop the offer and there are further projects ahead, but what excites us most is the opportunity to learn from the customer response and continue evolving the luxury proposition as the business develops.”
An evolving assortment
Arcan also identifies some emerging category trends that feed into how the stores are stocked and served across the network.
“One area where we have seen strong momentum since the pandemic is watches & jewellery,” he says.
“Part of this may have started with consumers becoming more conscious about purchasing products with longevity and intrinsic or perceived lasting value. But we believe it also connects with the broader movement towards timeless luxury that we are seeing today.
“At the same time, luxury has become much broader in the way consumers define it. Ready-to-wear, sneakers and accessories are increasingly important because they allow customers to engage with luxury in a more personal and sometimes more immediate way.
“For us, the opportunity is not to choose between traditional luxury and these newer areas, but to build a portfolio that reflects how the luxury customer is evolving.
“Watches & jewellery can coexist very naturally with fashion, sneakers and emerging accessory categories, while serving very different purchasing occasions.”
Progress through partnership
We also ask Arcan how luxury brand partners can better support the retailer to bring newness, visibility and excitement to the stores?
He responds: “We are fortunate that the scale and performance of our business allow us to offer our customers very strong assortments from many of our luxury partners. It also gives us access to exclusive products and allows us to accommodate travel retail-specific assortments where they are relevant.
“But our passengers have a strong appetite for newness and variety, so this is an area where partnership with brands becomes extremely important.
“The best results come when we combine what we know about the traveller with the brand’s knowledge of its product and global customer. That can translate into earlier access to newness, exclusive products, travel retail-specific assortments, pop-ups, launches and activations that are genuinely relevant to the airport customer.
“There is still an opportunity for brands and retailers to work even more closely in this respect. Airport retail has its own customer dynamics and purchasing occasions. The strongest propositions are therefore not necessarily a direct reproduction of what works in domestic retail, but something developed collaboratively with the travel environment in mind.”
That collaborative element is also vital to delivering airport promotional campaigns with impact. Here, a clear understanding of the target customer, strong storytelling, the right product, newness and exclusivity, impactful physical presentation and a meaningful digital component should all play a role.
One further element that can be overlooked when considering how to execute a great campaign is the time factor for travellers.
“However inspiring the experience is, our customer is still a traveller who has a flight to catch. We therefore have to create excitement without creating friction.
“For us, the best airport luxury experience is one that can capture attention very quickly communicate a compelling story, make discovery enjoyable and allow the customer to move from interest to purchase seamlessly.
“Luxury in an airport has to be memorable but it also has to respect the traveller’s journey.”
Towards tomorrow
Arcan also discusses the opportunity associated with tomorrow’s luxury travelling consumer.
“Younger travellers, particularly Gen Z, often enter luxury through very different categories than previous generations. Accessories, eyewear, jewellery, sneakers and gifting can all provide more accessible and immediate entry points into the luxury world, particularly in an airport environment where purchasing decisions often happen within a relatively short period of time.
“We also see an opportunity beyond the more traditional luxury categories. As lifestyles and travel habits continue to evolve, innovative lifestyle products and smart, design-driven accessories that bring greater enjoyment, convenience or functionality to the journey could become increasingly relevant.
“For younger travellers in particular, luxury is not necessarily defined only by traditional categories, but also by products that combine innovation, design and a genuine improvement to everyday life.
“This also means that we should not measure opportunity only by asking what our existing luxury customers are buying today. We should also ask what would encourage a traveller who currently walks past a luxury store to come inside.
“For us, that is an important area of future growth, creating categories, products and experiences that make luxury relevant to a broader and younger audience without diluting the value and desirability that define luxury in the first place.”
That brings us back to how challenging it can be to entice many potential shoppers into the stores.
“One of the biggest challenges is giving the traveller a compelling reason to purchase luxury at the airport, at that particular moment,” says Arcan.
“Price advantage remains relevant but today it cannot be the entire proposition. Customers have access to brands through flagship stores, department stores, ecommerce and increasingly sophisticated digital channels. The airport therefore has to offer something more.
“That ‘something more’ can be the right assortment, availability, exclusivity, newness, convenience, exceptional service or a memorable experience. Ideally, it is a combination of several of these.
“Travel retail should therefore not simply reproduce domestic luxury retail inside an airport. We need to understand the specific mindset of someone who is travelling and create a proposition around that moment.”
He concludes: “Ultimately, the question we have to answer for the customer is very simple. Why should I buy this here, and why should I buy it now? If we can answer that convincingly, we believe luxury still has significant growth potential in travel retail.” ✈
This interview was first published in The Moodie Davitt Report Category Insight Fashion & Accessories, September/October 2026. Click here for access.
