On 27 March, globally renowned design and retail strategist Kevin Roche* delivered a compelling keynote address at the Asia Pacific Travel Retail Association (APTRA) India Conference in Bengaluru, exploring how airports are evolving into cities and the importance of reinventing them as mixed-use, culturally resonant destinations. Here is an adapted and extended thought leadership piece arising from key themes within that address.
From Transit Hubs to Cultural Anchors
Airports have long been thought of as corridors between places – functional, transactional and narrowly commercial. That thinking is now obsolete. The future of aviation hubs lies not only as transportation centres and optimising duty‑free sales, but also in them being reinvented as mixed‑use, culturally resonant districts.
These airport cities are where commerce, hospitality, culture, entertainment and community can converge. If airport leaders and travel retail executives do not embrace this shift, they risk watching traffic grow while revenues and relevance stagnate.
The evolution of an Airport City
Jewel Changi Airport in Singapore opened in April 2019 and signalled a tipping point in non‑aeronautical airport development.
Today, with global passenger volumes recovering and expanding, and billion‑dollar entertainment venues proving that people will travel for experiences, the imperative is clear: all non‑aviation services, retail, entertainment, cultural content, sporting venues and hospitality activities should be the centrepiece of any airport experience.
The airport is becoming a city within itself. This is not about passenger flow – it is about where passengers spend their time and why. The data is telling – passenger volumes in 2024-25 surpassed pre‑pandemic levels, yet non‑aeronautical revenues remain below 2019 for the third consecutive year, according to Kearney’s industry report ‘Travel retail’s future flight path’.
In short, traffic is not the problem. Travellers are back, but sales conversion is not. The challenge is relevance and creating places and experiences that meaningfully engage travellers (and locals) beyond price and convenience.
Airport City experiences
Airports are growth retail markets for travellers of all ages. Purchasing decisions are increasingly emotional and experiential, and we shop and dine in blended, seamless ways where we live, work, play and travel. This is the blurring of consumer behaviours.
So, what does a future‑ready airport look like? Imagine landside and airside experiences that rival the best high streets, cultural institutions and lifestyle centres. The airport city also matches programmed events, destination hotels, sports and entertainment venues, cultural exhibitions, wellness and curated local food halls.
Think of the TWA Hotel at JFK and its celebration of aviation history, or Terminal 2 at Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru, a ‘Terminal in a Garden’ that celebrates local flora and culture.
We must stop treating duty‑free or convenience and travel retail as a captive, transactional event. Duty free will not be a competitive advantage in the future unless it becomes part of a broader lifestyle proposition.
A successful Airport City will need to monetise stories and experiences as much as products. The hospitality and popular brand sectors get this. The hotel sector races to embrace all forms of retail and food & beverage, and renowned brands race to embrace all forms of hospitality and food & beverage.
Strategic shift
This shift in positioning and relevance requires a profound change in strategy and governance. Master planning, land acquisition, leasing models and concession strategies must evolve to support long‑term, generational visions rather than short‑term turnover.
The current short-term financial cadence can stifle the investment appetite of renowned, experiential operators. We need creative partnership models that allow operators to co-invest in a sustained narrative and in destination-defining, socially relevant content and experiences.
Recent analysis by Savills and Sybarite shows that design quality is not just qualitative, but measurable. ‘Best-in-class’ destinations — across architecture, interiors, and experience — achieve sales densities of US$15,000–US$17,000 per square metre, around 70% above average. By contrast, ‘good’ environments deliver less than half that performance.
Crucially, ‘sense of place’ — a cohesive identity with emotional resonance — has the strongest correlation with sales density of any design factor.
Leading destinations demonstrate this clearly. The Grove in Los Angeles drives repeat visitation through continuous programming. Samaritaine in Paris blends heritage, hospitality and curated retail to operate as both cultural and commercial destination.
Harrods in London continues to increase dwell time and sales through targeted spatial and service reinvention. More recent models in the rapidly-evolving Asian market such as SKP Chengdu scale this approach, integrating retail and cultural programming within a highly curated sunken landscape environment.
What unites these examples is not scale, but integration: curated tenant mixes, regularly reprogrammed spaces, and layered experiences that create compelling reasons to return.
Grand architecture without context is just grand architecture. The best new airports will combine world-class design with a human‑scale, community-centered programming built to serve on a personal, human, and individual scale.
Curating the commercial mix must be visionary and inclusive. Airport cities must expand into hospitality, entertainment, sports, cultural tourism, and technology-enabled experiences.
From Transit to Experience
Airport Cities must expand into hospitality, entertainment, sports, cultural tourism and technology-enabled experiences.
Technology will accelerate the convergence of physical and digital. Phygital retail models, omnichannel fulfillment and seamless concierge services will be core expectations.
Travellers expect convenience, but they increasingly crave engagement. QR‑enabled in‑store experiences and integrated online ordering with delivery to their destination are the kinds of innovations that bridge impulse with intention.
Leadership must evolve. Organisations must cultivate Chief Experience Officers who champion systems design thinking with professionally trained designers at the boardroom table alongside finance, operations and real estate.
Design is a strategic resource: design is being more than how something looks, but instead how something works.
Investing in visual intelligence, aesthetic and contextual literacy, is no longer discretionary. It is part of the price of admission to the global contest for attention and time.
Runway to the future
Global economics and local geography support this shift. Growing middle classes in India, China, Türkiye, the UAE and Saudi Arabia mean more travellers, higher discretionary spend, and longer dwell times.
Airports should capitalise on this by designing for long‑stay, mixed‑use activations with residences, offices, hotels and entertainment clusters integrated with transit. The new Hollywood Park and SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, 12 minutes from Los Angeles International Airport, illustrate how mixed‑use developments can become tourism anchors.
Transformation requires patience and courage from the top down. Real innovation is often based on big, bold and audacious creation.
It is generational and demands long‑term capital, patient leases, and leadership willing to rebalance short‑term metrics for enduring value.
As highlighted in Sybarite’s Future of Experience Report 2025/26, organisations must measure return on experience (ROE) as rigorously as return on investment — positioning environments not simply as points of sale, but as platforms for cultural resonance, emotional connection and long-term value creation.
Invest in local wonder. Don’t chase generic global sameness. The stakes are high, but the opportunity is greater. Airport cities can become cultural and commercial anchors that enrich communities, boost non‑aeronautical revenues, and redefine the travel experience.
The question for airport executives and travel retail leaders is not whether to change, but how quickly they will reimagine their assets as civic destinations.
As travellers blend all forms of leisure and work to experience a destination, these aviation centres are evolving beyond their traditional paradigms. The future belongs to those who design experiences worth travelling for. ✈
*Kevin Roche is a globally recognised design and retail strategist with over 50 years of experience advising the world’s most renowned brands and retailers. He co-founded FRCH Design Worldwide, growing the firm from four to over 250 professionals. He served as Global CEO of Fitch Worldwide, a 900-person brand and design consultancy overseeing its sale to WPP’s Landor.
From 2000 to 2002, he served as SVP Marketing at DFS Group, later becoming SVP of Design and Construction at LVMH’s Selective Retail Group and served in that capacity as Senior Advisor to Group Le Bon Marché, Paris.
Kevin has just completed a four-and-a-half-year position as a Senior Advisor to the CEO of LVMH’s Champage, wine and spirits house Moët Hennessy. He continues to guide organisations in navigating global consumer expectations through experience-driven planning and design. He also serves as Non-Executive Director of global architecture and design studio Sybarite.
Kevin has shaped experiential destinations across retail, hospitality and mixed-use sectors. His work fuses design, brand and business strategies to deliver competitive, world-class environments, with leadership roles based in Paris, Hong Kong, New York and Los Angeles.
Contact: kevin@rochedesignstrategy.com
