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Aldeasa’s ‘The Shop’ at Alicante Airport is the company’s first full walk-through store in Spain |
SPAIN. Aldeasa has unveiled its new 1,650sq m “˜The Shop’ travel retail store at Alicante Airport”˜s new terminal, the Autogrill-owned company’s first 100% walk-through store in Spain.
The retailer has opened three further stores in the terminal, which opened on 24 March: an 80sq m Sweet Shop offering confectionery, including travel retail exclusive products plus a loose “˜pick and mix’ Haribo counter. Its portfolio also includes a 230sq m last-minute Express Shop, located close to departure gates, and a 140sq m Arrivals shop located in the baggage reclaim area. This features a selection of the most popular items in fragrances & cosmetics, as well as some food & beverage ranges.
The retailer is forecasting strong double-digit sales and spend per head from the new operation.
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(Left to right) Aldeasa Regional Director Eastern Zone Jaime Aguilar, AENA Commercial Services & Properties Director Mariano Sanz, Alicante Airport Director Santiago Martinez-Cava, Alicante Airport Commercial Division Head Maria del Pilar Garcia Sanz and Aldeasa Chief Commercial Officer Eugenio Andrades celebrate the store unveiling in the destination merchandise area with a member of the promotional team |
All passengers have to pass through the main store, under Aldeasa’s “˜The Shop’ fascia with its yellow and black signature colours. It houses a full travel retail range, with strong emphasis on the core categories of beauty, tobacco and liquor, with a fresh focus on key fashion and accessories brands, and a strong destination merchandise zone under the Thinking Alicante branding towards the end of the sweeping store.
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The retailer’s new 1,650sq m store is housed in Alicante Airport’s bright, striking new terminal |
Space has also been allocated within the store for special promotions, product presentations and tasting events, to involve, entertain and inform customers.
Aldeasa Chief Commercial Director Eugenio Andrades said: “We have worked in close partnership with AENA to develop these new stores in their impressive terminal building and are very proud of what we have achieved. The stores visibly demonstrate our commitment to innovation and investment, as well as our ability to work with closely with our business partners and create commercial concepts that work perfectly within the broader airport architecture and layout. We are confident that these four new stores in Alicante will offer the airport’s passengers an exciting, inspiring and stimulating shopping experience.”
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Beauty is worth around US$1 billion a year to the Autogrill travel retail division, and, with prominent displays and increasing personalisation, is becoming ever more important for Aldeasa’s Spanish airports business |
The retailer has placed particular emphasis on partnering with local suppliers, and entered into an agreement with IVEX (the Promotion & Trade agency of the Valencia Region) to develop activities in its airport shops, which promote the Spanish region of Valencia and its products on an international level. Over the coming months, passengers will be engaged with traditional music concerts, dance performances, exhibitions and product samplings.
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The Shop is home to several high-profile promotional areas that aim to capture passengers’ attention, backed by strong visual displays from the company’s digital screens that dot the store |
In addition, the “˜Thinking Alicante’ area is designed with the Mediterranean architecture of the region in mind, and this section of the store offers an extensive range of local products including toys, drinks, foods, souvenirs and a colourful range of household products.
Alicante Airport is Spain’s sixth busiest airport in terms of passenger numbers, after Madrid, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Malaga and Gran Canaria. Aldeasa has been present in Alicante Airport since 1976.
The new terminal building in Alicante Airport provides commercial space of 7,600sq m, housing 12 F&B units and 19 shops. The terminal has a total surface area of 314,000sq m, with 43 check-in counters. The terminal’s new parking facility offers 4,200 parking spaces.
The new terminal, the central feature of a €629 million airport investment, will provide services for 10 million passengers in year one, and has increased the airport’s total capacity to 20 million passengers.
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Lacoste occupies prime retail space towards the front of the store, where fashion is prominent |
Walking the store
Aldeasa’s Eugenio Andrades, who meets us to walk “˜The Shop’ on a bright Friday morning in Alicante, says that the move to adopt a walk-through format will be key in driving the success of the retail business in the new terminal.
“It’s a proud moment for us,” he says. “We’re part of a major investment by AENA in its airport infrastructure, which now includes all of Spain’s biggest airports, the latest here at Alicante. And it’s here that we have the full expression of the walk-through format in Spain. We have a partial walk-through format in Barcelona, but the flow is different to here. This is 100% walk-through. Outside Spain, we have a walk-through at Cancún Airport, plus of course WDF has been a pioneer of this format at its UK airports. These have proved successful, and it made sense to create a similar format here.”
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Luxottica: Hailed as a key partner and category manager for sunglasses |
The passenger base is almost entirely European, with a strong low-cost traveller base (50% of traffic comes from Ryanair and easyJet) and the UK consumer traditionally vital to spends and to traffic (some 2 million passengers of the near 10 million a year are going to or from the UK).
Andrades says: “It was important that we adapted to the passenger mix, and that the newness and local flavour we introduced appealed to the key spending groups. The UK passenger has been a challenge since the fall in the value of the Pound Sterling so we had to differentiate and to create a sense of value for them. But we also rely more and more on other nationalities, and have seen growth through the Nordic states and Russia, among others.”
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Cigarettes, a vital caegory for the UK passenger in particular, accounts for close to 30% of the business |
The black finishes around the stores, set off by Aldeasa’s signature yellow, adds a sense of the upscale, but as Andrades says, with the mid-market passenger segment, the store can’t be too premium.
“We have personalised much of the beauty area, but after that we rely on generic furniture mainly. That has the advantage of being flexible so we can rotate products and categories quickly.”
The store location takes passengers left after security, making the journey into The Shop feel a little forced and unnatural, but once inside, there is excellent visibility across the key categories. There’s also a wide walkway through the store, which will prove vital as the busy tourist season reaches its height in August. The only drawback is that passengers can’t see the exit to the store from the entrance, so orientation needs to be clear. Yet with all passengers coming through, there’s a huge opportunity to stop them as they walk, and Aldeasa has delivered a series of key stop points to capture their attention.
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Liquor, a key category, is housed mainly in flexible generic fixturing that can be changed quickly |
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The bar, branded by Bacardi, is a key ‘stop point’ for passengers on their journey through the store |
The first major category to grab passengers’ attention is the critical beauty business, set out in 263sq m of space. It’s a business worth around US$1 billion to the group. It’s absolutely key for WDF and is also becoming increasingly important to Aldeasa today.
Key brands such as Chanel, Christian Dior and the leading skincare names enjoy good personalised space, plus there is a clear value message at the till that features in this zone, with the popular €19.90 fragrance offer prominent, alongside the “˜40% off’ message that has featured for years at the group’s UK airports. As in other zones, there’s heavy use of digital media to reinforce the value message, and a strong promotional area that will see regular brand rotation.
P&C is one of the categories to benefit from the enlarged space in the new terminal (1,650sq m in The Shop compared to around 1,000sq m previously), and another is fashion & accessories, also strategically placed close to the store entrance.
“One of the keys for us was to make the entrance to the store, and the overall environment, appear “˜softer’, simpler and less crowded,” notes Andrades. “Placing a strong fashion offer here is part of our evolution. Cross-selling from category to category is important and fashion can help deliver that.” Lacoste, a key partner for the group says Andrades, occupies the prime early space, with strong zones dedicated to Bijoux Terner – “very popular among the passenger profile here” – and to Samsonite, which is also prominent. Watch brand Sekonda is also a strong performer given good space, and “has adapted well to travel retail, with good pricing and good value,” notes Aldeasa.
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The promotional zone was developed with the Valencia regional trade board as a showcase for local goods |
A highlight is Luxottica’s sunglasses wall. “Luxottica has been our category manager for sunglasses as a group, and we have worked well across many locations,” says Andrades. “They have a strong supply chain and provided great support for the category, and have proved a great partner.”
The key, he adds, to making this fashion area work, is to have fewer brands but in better space, and to make sure they are adapted to the passenger mix.
Sitting tight to the walkway as passenger pass through the centre of the store are cigarettes, still close to 30% of sales, and another vital stop point on the passenger’s journey.
“JTI has been a major contributor to developing the store area,” says Andrades, “but the environment is about the category rather than any single brand or house. Of course we can’t advertise or promote or discount, but the category still deserves good space. We have not put it right upfront, and at the back of the store it would be too busy a stop point before the tills. We believe in this category, and while the shopper also believes in it, we will continue to do so, and so will the airport.”
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Thinking Alicante is Aldeasa’s fine local expression of its destination concept |
The store continues along a wide walkway that allows passenger to orientate themselves, with liquor in a 300sq m space following tobacco, and featuring an eye-catching Bacardi-branded bar at the back of the store. Liquor sales are dominated by whisky and vodka at 20% each of the business, with gin at 10%.
“Liquor is semi-personalised, with a lot of generic fixturing,” says Andrades. “There are similarities to Barcelona, where we can adapt the offer quickly, using flexible furniture and creating tasting bars on the gondolas. We will try to do some uptrading but really this isn’t a major opportunity among this passenger mix. The bar will be important, and is the largest we operate in Spain, with good space around it. It will be another stop point, alongside tobacco and alongside the promotional area early on in the store.
“Because of the store layout and the exit leading into the main terminal and gates, we have to capture passengers’ attention and spends before they leave, as they are unlikely to return.”
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Aldeasa is engaging passengers with dance, music and other entertainment to encourage them to stop and browse |
The final points on the journey through the store feature confectionery to the right – an area that could perhaps do with greater personalisation and focus – and the key destination zone, a growing and increasingly impressive element of Aldeasa’s stores.
The first part of the zone features promotional products via the IVEX link, promoted with theatre and humour during our visit by musicians, dancers and promoters dressed in traditional costume. It features suppliers across spirits, food, souvenirs and toys, each listed for a limited run, and those products that succeed here will find a more permanent home in the main Thinking Alicante section further on.
Aldeasa Regional Director Eastern Zone for Spain Jaime Aguilar Blanco says: “We have 23 suppliers in the promotional area, with the main categories food and drinks, with regional products such as nougat, jams, honey, nuts, olives and hams very popular. We’re very happy with how suppliers have adapted their ranges for the airport environment and the professionalism of these companies.”
At 8% of sales, destination merchandise is an important and growing business. The Thinking Alicante area is its heart, with the design of the zone influenced by the blue-tiled rooftops of Benidorm, and traditional wooden fixtures. The area could perhaps be better sign-posted and branded more strongly under Aldeasa’s “˜Thinking”¦’ fascia, but it features a good mix of well-known Spanish gifts, and separate areas for food, drinks and other souvenirs. The prices reinforce the value message of the store.
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Aldeasa’s ‘Sweet Shop’ offers high-volume goods including a Haribo ‘pick and mix’ selection |
Andrades says: “The airports we work with really like the “˜Thinking”¦’ concept. It’s important to have that Sense of Place, as the airport is the first and last experience a visitor has of the country. This is a way of exposing local brands to an international audience, and this area provides another stop point for passengers to browse and to shop. We spent a lot of time deciding to place this area at the end of the store, and we’re confident it will work, though the proof will be seen once we’ve had several months of trading, including the key summer months.”
The other smaller stores broadly mirror The Shop approach and style, though the “˜Sweet Shop’ has certain key differences. “It’s a low individual spend but hopefully high volume store,” says Andrades. “We aim to do 2,000 transactions a day here. It’s different in that it doesn’t really cannibalise the offer in the main store, with a lot of volume packs and the “˜pick and mix’ offer. It was one of the few speciality concepts in the main concourse that we tendered aggressively for, and where we thought we could add value.”
The last minute “˜Express Shop’ reinforces once more the value message, with no personalisation and carrying best sellers from the core categories, while the Arrivals store is among the only ones in Spain.
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The Express Shop carries a range of best-selling items in space close to B gates in the new terminal |
Overall, the main store is a fine first walk-through unit for Aldeasa, and sits well within its portfolio of vibrant, modern shops in AENA’s growing list of upgraded or new airport terminals. There are some issues around navigation of the store for first-time travellers, with no view to the back end of the store, and we feel there could be a greater emphasis on personalisation in certain categories, notably liquor and confectionery.
But the space is well laid out, with strong adjacencies between beauty and fashion, cigarettes and spirits, spirits and local products, and confectionery and toys. The additional space in this large store has meant breathing room for promotions, more flexibility to change products and categories around, plus a welcome emphasis on a strong destination offer in dedicated space.
The value message throughout speaks of a retailer that knows its consumer well, and that is aiming to simplify the store rather than over-complicate. Pricing will be key here. The “˜20% off’ message is relative to existing Aldeasa prices, though it isn’t made clear on the shelves. But a clearer, more consistent pricing message will soon be unveiled, notes Andrades.
“We are reviewing our value offer across the group,” he says. “The message is likely eventually to be a comparison with the domestic market in each territory rather than the current airport price, so -25% off will be compared to downtown, and we will make that clear. So we are repositioning our pricing message, and will make the details clear in the months ahead.”
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The Arrivals store is one of the few that have been opened to date in Spain’s airports |
Trading at The Shop has started well, and the company believes it is on course to hit its double-digit growth targets ahead for the Alicante business, with the summer peak the key period. With its fine new walk-through store, a breakthrough moment and a first for Spain, the retailer looks to have every chance of succeeding.
