SPAIN. Pay a visit to Barcelona and the headquarters of leading travel dining group Areas, and you’ll hear the word ‘spirit’ invoked in many of your conversations with team members.
It’s a term used when senior management, from CEO Óscar Vela down, describe the entrepreneurship and innovation that goes into driving the company forward. You hear it in conversations about partnership and collaboration, the spirit of which management believes are key factors in recent tender successes. Or you come across it as the people you meet infer the ‘guest-centric spirit of excellence’ that the company pushes for across its ten markets.
Most of all, perhaps, it’s used in reference to the culture and people at the group, something we witnessed first-hand for the final of the Areas Challenge – an internal competition that encourages teams to deliver higher sales, service standards and consumer satisfaction – in Barcelona earlier this year.
“There is a special spirit here,” says Vela, echoing the point. “Our people are our greatest strength and they take pride in working for Areas. Many of them have been here a long time, and have contributed to this very nice story.”
That corporate spirit can be seen in the interaction between management and teams, and the pride and delight, for example, that the Areas Mexico team took in winning the internal Areas Challenge, as we saw first-hand in February.
It’s central to how the company works, Vela says. “When we are planning a bid I love to jump on a plane to see, hear, smell the location, talk to the people there about the customers, our offer, our plan. That teaches me so much and underlines that operations and detail are the key to success. You need to be very intense about this. We have a special culture from the people to our operational excellence, our brand portfolio to our sustainability approach.”
The conversation also has to be about the food too, and here, Areas is intent on raising its game further.
“You must be passionate about food and the food experience,” says Vela. “You would see this if you travel with any of our country directors, talk to them about food, about wine, with their suppliers. We recruit for this passion.”
Since being established in 1968, Areas has lived through the ups and downs of the global travel market, as well as changes in ownership – it was acquired by PAI Partners in 2019 – and is now on a firm, identifiable path to competing as a true global heavyweight.
Today Areas generates around €2 billion in revenues from 1,900 points of sale in ten countries, with around 350 million customers through the doors of its airport, rail motorway and other leisure destinations.
Vela says: “Our focus and strength is our diversity in markets and across channels. The land-based markets recovered faster than air during the pandemic, which allowed us to recover faster than most competitors.”
He says that Areas maintains a “clear geographic focus” on Europe and the US and latin America in terms of growth markets.
France, where Areas is the travel hospitality leader, is the largest single country market, followed by its home market, Spain.
“In some markets we have clear leadership and we aim to keep this status, and expand upon it. We have a very good position in Spain and Portugal, France, Italy, all heavily tourism markets. We aim to grow in the US and Latam, and are bidding accordingly. In Germany we have room to grow as we are limited in our airport footprint so far.
“By channels our target is mainly travel but it is leisure too. We aim to grow everywhere in airports, rail and motorway, and we like the leisure business very much. It is a welcome niche; we can use our brand portfolio well, we know how to manage peaks, similar to other channels, and we like this business a lot.”
Recent gains underline how high Areas’ ambition reaches across many of these key markets.
As reported earlier in June, Areas captured a major food & beverage tender at Guadalajara Airport, which is set to be worth US$150 million over seven years. This consolidates its strong position in the important Mexico market.
This follows other diversification and several contracts that represent game-changing gains in volume terms. As revealed in February the company won 35 of 55 locations in a major F&B tender at Madrid-Barajas Airport, with projected sales of €1 billion over eight years.
Another key concession recently announced was for the IFEMA fairgrounds in Spain, as well as entry to Dresden rail station in Germany.
These are complemented in the US – a key target region – by recent openings at Houston Hobby Airport and at the travel plazas (highway) in West Virginia. Those gains build on a network of over 130 sales points at 22 locations, including 71 at ten airports.
Vela says: “In the US we remain smaller than the other big players but there is a huge tender pipeline, and we aim to accelerate and take a greater slice of new business. It is also an excellent travel services market that can deliver big volumes.
“Overall in expansion terms we are happy, and have performed even better in most tenders in most countries than we expected, led by Spain and France. Madrid Barajas is of course very important and we are very confident about the packages we won. It will be one of our flagships as it was once before.”
Areas of course is principally a food services business but it also leverage a long-established retail expertise in certain key locations. The opening of the hugely impressive delicatessen Sibarium at Barcelona Airport T1 took its offering in this segment to a new level in February, with a high-quality range across wines, hams and cheeses, plus the expansion of the store centrepiece, a tasting counter.
Vela says: “We know that food and retail is converging – we talk about ‘food-venience’. It’s an important dynamic and we see a lot in that direction, alongside the wider recent consolidation of dining and shopping expertise.
“Sibarium was born as retail, selling jamon, cheeses, wines, all at high quality and it broadened into sandwiches and that element has become so successful, since. The fact that you sell good products to eat or take away lends authority to the food offer in the store.
“Today our retail offer is all around food. We are now super-focused on this and providing a great culinary experience.”
When you speak to Areas management, raising the bar for experience is a constant theme. It’s easier said than done, so setting Key Performance Indicators to raise performance was a necessary part of the long-term strategy even years ago.
Vela explains: “Our Areas Worldwide Challenge plays a big part in this drive for excellence.We began around ten years ago by setting a goal for our business in Iberia to reach €500 million in turnover from €360 million at the time – it’s now €600 million.
“To help achieve that we set ourselves an internal competition, under the title ‘A500’. Part of this was winning the contract for Barcelona Airport, to bring that contract ‘home’.
“But as well as growing through new business, we also focused ourselves on active selling, on key metrics we had never used before, and measuring things in new ways. We focused on conversion, on KPIs, on customer surveys, and we saw how the team spirit came together. Elements such as conversion rate, NPS, average ticket were all new to our teams. We began to set common standards that are now in place across the organisation and that are the basis of our internal Challenges.
“I can safely say that something has really happened in the past 10-15 years. The offer today is very different and much better than it was. I accept that customer perception does not always match this and when you are managing flows, queues or flight delays, these can be difficult situations. We are manage many things while trying to make money under often tough contracts. But what matters is that our colleagues are now all following our guidelines, pushing to be better and lifting standards.”
Crucially, the internal exchanges means best practice is shared between countries.
“It’s not about headquarters setting the standard,” says Vela. “It’s about learning what works well in Italy can work in Spain or elsewhere. We talk produce all the time, with our managers but also with the chefs. We aim to create value, which is itself related to service, alongside the best product and experience. We want to connect with our partners and ensure that service to our guests improves constantly. And we aim to do all that while taking seriously our responsibility and commitment to the planet, embodied in our Areas for Change programme.
“That is our mission, to be the best at achieving this across all our channels. And we are in a good moment I believe. The spirit across these areas in our business has never been stronger and that will take us forward into the future.” ✈ 
Note: The Moodie Davitt Report publishes the FAB Newsletter, which features highlights of openings, events and campaigns from around the world of airport and travel dining. Please email Kristyn@MoodieDavittReport.com to subscribe.
The company also hosts The Airport Food & Beverage (FAB) + Hospitality Conference & Awards, which will take place on 12-13 September in Bangkok, Thailand after a four-year COVID-driven absence. Notably, FAB’s remit has been extended this year to feature wider airport hospitality services, including hotels and lounges.
For all partnership, speaker, content and other enquiries please contact Jeannie Wong, The Moodie Davitt Report Asia Bureau Chief and Head of Marketing & Events at Jeannie@MoodieDavittReport.com.
