The 2011 Trinity Forum, jointly organized by ACI and The Moodie Report, is underway with 300 delegates in attendance. Speaking at the opening of this premier airport commercial revenues conference, ACI Director General has encouraging words for renewed traffic growth but also points out some key challenges and trends that the airport-retail-brand trinity will face in the coming years.
Says Gittens, “Non-aeronautical revenues, on a global average, constitute about 50 percent of an airport’s income – vital for meeting airport development needs today and tomorrow. With traffic forecast to double in the next 20 years worldwide, airports will once again have the challenge of managing capacity and will have to make tough choices on competing needs for space in the airport terminal.
“Retailers and brand managers will be working with airports to determine how the terminal space can best be used. We work with our architects and developers, but we are also working with our airlines and public service partners to improve on the transit through the airport. Our goal is to streamline the curbside to departure gate experience and to make that process less tedious and less time consuming.”
Gittens highlights three challenges in managing retail opportunities and maintaining the vital stream of non-aeronautical revenues:
– airline limitations to carry-on baggage,
– recent World Health Organization deliberation on duty free sales of alcohol and tobacco,
– changes to now harmonized global security measures, of immediate concern in the EU, that can confuse and discourage the traveler from purchasing products at airports.
She calls on airlines to work with airports, retailers and brand managers, in a greater spirit of collaboration: “In the future, the passenger will communicate not only with the airline, but also with the airport and the concessionaires in revolutionary ways. Technology is bringing that future ever closer. We must explore today the solutions that facilitate that relationship in the interest the customers we serve.”
Airports, Retailers and Brands: strengthening the partnership
