ITALY. Specialist travel retail consultancy 2.0 & Partners has won a ‘mystery shopping’ tender at Rome Fiumicino Airport.
Airport operator Aeroporti di Roma, which launched the tender, said it was hoping to drive improvements in the hub’s travel retail offer.
Starting this month, 2.0 & Partners will make about 2,000 discreet visits to more than 118 stores at Fiumicino Airport over the course of 2019.
The airport stores will be reviewed and evaluated based on specific commercial criteria such as customer focus and the attitude of sales staff, the partners said. These will be quantified and measured against standards that Aeroporti di Roma wants to maintain or exceed at its flagship location, in order to enhance the passenger retail experience.
“Mystery Shopping is one of the best ways for airports and travel retailers to discover where they can improve their service and therefore increase sales,” said 2.0 & Partners Senior Vice President Marco Passoni.
“We act independently to offer constructive advice so that enhancements can be made. Among other things, we will focus on store visuals including merchandising, the fluidity of the sales process and various aspects of travel selling. From all of these inputs we can score the overall customer experience.”
Passoni noted that the 2.0 & Partners team was “multi-ethnic and multicultural” and “operates internationally with programmes tailored to specific travel retail environments”.
He added: “Their aim is to review objectively, and in detail, the whole selling process. Taking into consideration customers’ cultural differences and personal approaches is one key element of the exercise.”
2.0 & Partners has developed a new app and online portal for its mystery shopping service, which will support the project at Rome Fiumicino.
It enables stakeholders to see a store’s current performance, based on a series of criteria, as soon as these are uploaded by mystery shoppers. They are also able to access historical information.
Passoni commented: “The mystery shopping app/online portal allows operators and airports to monitor store performances in real time. The parameters are extensive and detailed so that we can really get to the heart of where any issue might lie. The app speeds up the reporting process and improves transparency for everyone involved.”
Four key criteria are used to evaluate stores: visual, sales process, travel selling and customer experience, with each weighted as a percentage to give an overall score out of 100. Within these four criteria are a number of sub-parameters that are also measured and reviewed in detail, according to 2.0 & Partners. They include hospitality, general management, product presentation, up-selling or cross-selling abilities, and the handling of multicultural demands.
“2.0 & Partners had a strong 2018 and the Rome project is an excellent beginning to 2019,” said Passoni. “It follows a mystery shopping operation started last year with another airport group a few months ago. With the launch of our mystery shopping app/online portal as well, we are well positioned to build upon the solid foundations we have laid down.”
