Top Travel Retailers Report (continued)
Lagardère Travel Retail
2021 Sales (million)
€3,000
2021 Rank
6
With managed turnover of €3 billion in 2021, Lagardère Travel Retail remains a firm fixture in the upper reaches of our annual rankings. The figures, as last year, include food & beverage, which was worth €500 million. The company is well diversified across duty free & luxury, travel essentials and F&B – though the entry of Dufry into the latter through collaboration with Autogrill will heighten competition between the major players that operate across multiple channels.
To date in 2022 the company has benefited from recovery in European passenger traffic and strong momentum in the North American business, led by domestic travel.
The North Asia division made a key contribution in 2020 and 2021 as Lagardère Travel Retail’s focus on Chinese domestic airports (and increasingly railway stations) proved a huge positive when Chinese international travel virtually halted.
Striking a fresh agreement to partner with Group ADP at Paris airports represents a huge recent boost to Lagardère Travel Retail
The company is also a supply partner to Hainan Tourism Duty Free Shopping Complex, which opened in Hainan in January 2021. In September last year ecommerce giant JD.com and leading Chinese state-owned fund JIC invested in Lagardère Travel Retail’s North Asia business. The partners are cooperating in areas including omnichannel retail, smart supply chain, logistics and analytics. Lagardère Travel Retail aims to leverage JD’s digital expertise to enable new customer experiences and services throughout its retail network in airports and railway stations.
Also in Asia, the company recently made its debut in Japan, a signal of ambition for the future as the airport retail market (and duty free in particular) potentially opens up.
Other major gains in recent months include the group’s first South American duty free and F&B contracts, at Lima and Santiago de Chile airports respectively.
Via the HWH deal the company is extending its presence at Dubai International, where it already operated The Daily DXB concept
Alongside Dufry, Lagardère Travel Retail has also been a force in driving market consolidation over the past decade and more. Late last year it struck a joint-venture agreement with Australian travel retailer AWPL, effective from 1 January 2022. And in February this year it moved to acquire a majority share and controlling interest in Dubai-based HWH Hospitality Investments’ food & beverage operations.
Most significantly of all in terms of sales and business scale, Lagardère Travel Retail recently retained its partnership status with Groupe ADP in a new joint venture to operate duty free & other retail at Paris Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports, under the Extime Duty Free Paris brand. Aéroports de Paris (ADP) estimates total sales of €9.4 billion over the ten-year term, starting from January 2023.
In an encouraging signal about the prospects for business recovery, Lagardère Travel Retail Chairman & CEO Dag Rasmussen earlier this year predicted a return to pre-pandemic 2019 revenues by 2023.
Cultural reach: The Discover brand at Singapore Changi Airport
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The Moodie Davitt eZine Issue 313 | 28 July 2022
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