Our regular feature, brought to you in association with Strange Nature Gin from New Zealand, celebrates memorable scenes, moments, launches and campaigns related to the global aviation and travel retail sphere.
UK. Today’s choice of images come from The Moodie Davitt Report President Dermot Davitt in transit to Miami at London Heathrow Terminal 3, where the shops and restaurants appeared to be doing better than brisk trading on a busy day for travel, as the Easter break ends for many.
Across the terminal on Sunday morning common seating areas were full, so too were most bars and restaurants, and there were queues of shoppers snaking back from the tills in many of the stores.
What was evident, especially in retail, was the attraction of brand Britain. The Avolta store’s confectionery area was alive with shoppers from around the world grabbing handfuls of Fortnum & Mason, Walker’s, Cadbury and other brands. The line of departing visitors to pose with the Cadbury brand’s London cab and Big Ben installations was tremendous to see, and spoke loudly about the power of targeted, destination-themed activations to engage travellers.
Just as busy we observed were Harrods and Glorious Britain stores, with their own ranges of destination goods – with strong appeal to travellers from Asia Pacific and the Americas in particular.
The F&B spaces were more than just busy with dine-in customers; there were long lines at Caffe Nero and other coffee shops and fast casual dining brands.
This speaks to observations made on our recent walking tour of Heathrow (T2 in that case) with Retail Director Fraser Brown about F&B demand sharpening as travel ramps back up.
He spoke at the time of the changing commercial mix, saying: “Food & beverage space will grow a little more, which recognises that demand is strong. On the back of recovery, we have seen an increase in dwell time of +10-12% and people who are here that bit longer need to eat.
“The other driver is reason for travel, which has changed slightly, with more people visiting friends and family compared to business travel, and those people are not usually entering the lounge. So that could be another reason behind increased F&B activity.”
These dynamics look like they are fully at play across Heathrow today – a snapshot of activity on one morning suggests there is headroom for more F&B offers where they also make sense commercially. ✈️
