POLAND. Lagardère Travel Retail and Polish Airports inaugurated a striking new commercial offer at Warsaw Chopin Airport on Thursday. The heart of the development is the refurbished and expanded Terminal 1, which now houses 5,000sq m of commercial space, +70% more than previously. The company invited around 70 guests, including The Moodie Report, to its launch event.
Lagardère Travel Retail invested €10 million in the project, building 25 stores with nine new concepts created.
The opening (the terminal was revealed to passengers in May) is a big step for the travel retailer, as it showcases its ability to operate across all three of its core business lines: duty free & luxury (39% of the new space), travel essentials (19%) and food service (43%).
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Aelia Duty Free is at the heart of the commercial offer; the new liquor zone is one of the airside highlights with its focus on Polish vodkas; here, Chopin is evocatively represented through a stunning front-of-store installation (below) |
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The ‘next generation’ Aelia Duty Free concept in 2,000sq m of space is a central feature. This is split into two stores (with a further large outlet in T2), one featuring fragrances & cosmetics, the other liquor, tobacco and confectionery.
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Leading Polish vodka brand Zubrowka is displayed in an engaging ‘forest’ zone |
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Other highlights include a stunning Polish delicatessen with goods from 65 small producers, the first Samsung brand store at a Polish airport, newly designed convenience brand 1 Minute and a large children’s store featuring toys and a dedicated M&Ms area.
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Dag Rasmussen introduces the travel retailer’s new-look stores and services at a presentation at Warsaw Chopin Airport on Thursday |
The Fashion Gallery is the core of a newly developed fashion & accessories offer, which brings brands such as Michael Kors, Ermenegildo Zegna, Emporio Armani, Salvatore Ferragamo, Ralph Lauren and Burberry to the airport for the first time.
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Chanel is among the big beauty brands to benefit from the expansion of space in T1 |
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‘Only at the airport’ is the retailer’s slogan for channel exclusives |
In addition, there is the biggest execution yet of Lagardère Travel Retail’s dining offer, with international, local and bespoke brands. The food & drinks offer has been expanded by 700sq m to around 2,000sq m.
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Leading beauty brands have brought their A-game to the location |
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Lagardère Travel Retail Chairman and CEO Dag Rasmussen told The Moodie Report: “For us this is very significant. It is proof of the strength of our strategy across the three business lines, duty free & luxury, travel essentials and food service. We are the only major company in travel retail to operate across these three segments, and in Terminal 1 in Warsaw we do all of them. That’s a rare opportunity.”
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The P&C store features areas for treatments and the opportunity for brands to engage the consumer, plus a nail bar, a travel retail first for the airport |
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Chopin Airport CEO Michal Kaczmarzyk said: “Global brands available in our shopping arcade will allow passengers to feel as if they were at the best department stores in Paris, London or Milan. This is exactly what our customers expect. At the airport they have time for relaxed shopping, and we are happy to provide them with that opportunity.”
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The confectionery zone is small but well personalised |
Lagardère Travel Retail won ten-year contracts for the key business lines after a tender in August and September 2013. The goal, said Rasmussen, was to create variety (of brands and concepts) and diversity for passengers, to develop concepts that would complement what existed before and to tailor the offer to the needs of the Warsaw travelling consumer (75% of whom are Poles).
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Le Connaisseur takes high-end spirits and cigars retailing at Warsaw to a new level |
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He said the success of the business at Warsaw would be built on operational excellence, the access to top brands, synergies between the business lines and innovation. The company has introduced new digital and CRM features at Warsaw as well as the new brands and concepts.
Rasmussen said: “We have taken some risk here but that is the advantage of doing everything in the commercial area. If something does not work you have the opportunity to be flexible and change.”
https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/216036377&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=falseThe Warsaw project sees the next stage in the roll-out of Aelia Duty Free ‘next generation’ store, trialled at Marseille last year and now being introduced to Zagreb and Auckland (with Nice T1 and London Luton to follow). This is built on a number of pillars, from gifting to service to Sense of Place.
The strategic pillars include:
The Art of the Gift: Most passengers enter a travel retail store with the idea of buying a gift, the retailer said. Aelia Duty Free aims to capitalise on this via certain service signatures, gift wrapping, product merchandising and selection.
Facilitation: Duty free shopping needs to be made easier, according to the retailer, by conveying a better understanding of customs allowances, price benefits versus the High Street and product information. This is made possible thanks to a bespoke app on the in-store iPads, which each staff member carries. “The digital part is a support for the salesforce, an extension of the sales arm,” said Rasmussen. “We ensure we offer the best price to the consumer. It’s about maximising satisfaction.” Passengers at Warsaw can pre-order online products and collect them in-store before their flight, through a new website (www.aeliadutyfree.pl).
Among the other innovations is a new proprietary e-book platform, available in nine stores and said to be a global airport first. At Relay, Virgin and Discover stores, passengers can choose a book title from the offer on the shelves and buy a voucher that allows them to download it to their device rather than carry the hard copy away. The logo for the new platform is ‘Lets’ Book’. This has had a slow start, noted the retailer, but points the way towards the future sales opportunity for books at airports, it noted.
Here and Nowhere else: Aelia Duty Free said the experience has to be unique in each location, with a strong Sense of Place critical. For Warsaw, the concept delivers this element through two experiential zones in the liquor store created in partnership with local brands Chopin & Zubrowska. The Chopin area features a stunning design that includes a piano, a reference to the famous composer Frédéric Chopin. Zubrowska has created an engaging Białowieża Forest Bison Grass Zone that can also be viewed from landside Departures.
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Premium Food Gate is a top-class destination store, bringing together 65 quality producers from Poland across chocolates, meats, cheeses and drinks |
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Polish wines are the best-selling items in the delicatessen |
Guiding guests on a tour on Thursday, Lagardère Travel Retail CEO Travel Essentials (Poland) Przemek Lesniak said the new spirits store is “the best alcohol shop in Poland”, with the widest range of Polish brands in the country. This is complemented by a new Le Connaisseur store featuring luxury Cognac, whisky and cigars from brands such as Johnnie Walker (notably ultra-deluxe blended collection John Walker & Sons and Rémy Martin.
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An M&M’s corner is a key feature of the new toys store |
There is a strong beauty offer housed in a dedicated store under the Aelia Duty Free name, with excellent personalisation for many brands; the store is linked to a new Victoria’s Secret boutique, the first to open at a Polish airport.
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Chief’s is the Polish food element in a value-for-money food court concept that also includes McDonald’s and Italian concept Bricco Cafe |
Destination goods are well represented, with the highlight a new concept created for Warsaw called Premium Food Gate. This features locally sourced goods from 65 Polish producers, many of which are not readily available on the High Street. The store offers high-class merchandising of meats, cheese, chocolates and drinks, with Polish wines the best-selling items. A big attraction in the store is the installation of an iconic Syrena R-20 car from the Soviet era, renovated for this location.
The broad dining offer is among the most impressive aspects of the new commercial range, underlining the retailer’s growing food service business (now 20% of consolidated sales and growing since the acquisition of Airest).
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The Fashion Gallery: the company’s established luxury concept comes to Warsaw |
A new food court offer three concepts – McDonald’s, Airest Italian food concept Bricco Café and quick service restaurant Chief’s (with a Polish and international menu). The outlets have a single payment system that make it easier for passengers to order meals.
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The newly designed 1 Minute store offers convenience items, baked goods and coffee |
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The Illy brand brings a new dimension to the landside Departures area |
There are also a number of new sit-down restaurants including upscale unit The Flame and a medium-priced Polish restaurant Misa (landside), while Papaya offers fresh juice, cocktails and salads. Other new units include Illy Espressamente, McCafé and a new proprietary concept Bread & Co, which offers coffee and sandwiches in a comfortable space in landside Departures.
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Bread & Co: A newly created food concept from Lagardère Travel Retail |
Importantly, managing each of the key business channels offers Lagardère Travel Retail the opportunity to cross-merchandise between each. Rasmussen said: “If someone is dining in one of our restaurants we can offer them a voucher for the beauty or liquor & tobacco shop. They may want to buy the wine they were drinking for example. It is something unique to Warsaw and it generates additional spend. To date, the voucher have driven +4% to +8% added spend across categories, he said.
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Samsung opens at Warsaw in a first for Poland |
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Rasmussen said that the Warsaw investment underlined Lagardère Travel Retail’s promise to deliver on its new slogan of ‘Experience new horizons, every day’.
He said: “We are positioning ourselves as a B2C4B company. As a retailer you are a B2C company, and we want to optimise customer satisfaction and spend. But our first clients are B2B, namely landlords and brands. So we need to maximise the customer experience for those business partners. We won’t be successful if we don’t satisfy the customer and also if we don’t maximise the value creation from the real estate. Our goal is to optimise the overall experience of the airport. In that, customer satisfaction is critical and we want to be one of the strong links in generating that satisfaction.”
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Innovation at work: Travellers can select a book in the store and download it to their devices |
Rasmussen did not comment on his precise expectations for sales at Warsaw but said: “We have been in this airport for a number of years now and we have grown consistently. It is a dynamic airport. Probably we’ll see sales per square metre decrease given the big jump in sales area we now manage, but we have commitments for growth that we are optimistic about.”
Warsaw Chopin Airport handled 10.6 million passengers in 2014 (9.3 million international). The airport has set itself the goal to become “Central Europe’s leading airport handling over 20 million passengers per year” in the future, according to the CEO.
*We’ll bring you more on the Warsaw development soon. We’ll also feature a major interview with Dag Rasmussen, in which he talks about the Warsaw project, Lagardère Travel Retail’s positioning, market consolidation, relationships with airport and brand partners and the challenges facing the industry.
