Meeting today’s challenges in travel retail with digital commerce marketplaces

Airports, airlines and the travel retail industry are facing unparalleled challenges. Rapidly changing purchasing behaviour by customers, the continuously growing impact of e-commerce and digitalisation are disrupting traditional revenue streams and business models of airports and airlines alike. Research shows that the traditional travel retail model of impulse buying at the airport has significantly decreased. Airports, airlines and travel retailers should embrace digitalisation and view it as an enormous opportunity to find new ways to generate core non-aviation revenues. To achieve this, though, they will need to collaborate and jointly create a digital airport commerce ecosystem, with the airport being the focus of an omnichannel marketplace. Airports have several competitive advantages when utilising e-commerce that can help them gain the pole position in omnichannel retailing. To create a digital airport commerce ecosystem and an online platform, the key players in aviation need full management support, a skilled team with a digital attitude, value-creating digital business models, enabling legal contracts and high-performance, scalable information technology (IT). This paper describes how stakeholders in the travel retail industry — airports, airlines, brands and duty-free operators — can benefit from digitalisation and how they can begin their journey on the way to a digital airport commerce ecosystem.