UK. WHSmith Travel yesterday officially opened its largest flagship one-stop shop for travel essentials in 6,000sq ft at Birmingham Airport. The Moodie Davitt Report was there to capture the story in words, images and audio (see podcasts below).
The space, which has been reconfigured as part of a transformation of the departures lounge, features zones for food & drinks, books & magazines, plus health & beauty, tech products, locally themed gifts and a Costa Coffee kiosk.
The store has been specifically designed for Birmingham taking design cues from local architecture, with a lengthy LED fascia, and good visibility to ensure that travellers can navigate the categories, view promotional offers, locate purchases and check out quickly.
The outlet also incorporates improved sustainability, environmental practices and energy-efficient systems, including food chillers with energy-saving doors.
WHSmith UK Travel Managing Director Andrew Harrison said: “What sets this store apart is our commitment to curating an array of travel essentials products under one roof, with a bespoke store design inspired by the local architecture, that caters to every traveller’s needs.
“From travel essentials such as health & beauty, food to go and reading materials, to global tech brands and souvenirs – this store really does promise an unmatched convenience shopping experience for time pressed customers. I couldn’t be more proud of both the end result and also the team’s hard work and meticulous attention to detail to create what is now our largest UK airport store for our partner at Birmingham Airport and our customers.”
This is the latest in WHSmith’s development of the one-stop-shop format following executions at London Heathrow and London Gatwick airports and across rail sites, including London Euston and London Paddington stations.
Birmingham Airport Commercial Director Richard Gill said: “We are delighted that WHSmith chose Birmingham Airport as the location to open its new flagship store. The new outlet is a one-stop-shop for our travelling customers, with products ranging from beauty to tech and everyday essentials. The store will complement our current departure lounge offer further, ensuring our customers have ample choice when travelling from Birmingham Airport.
“The WHSmith flagship store is just the first step in our exciting journey in ensuring our departure lounge is ready for our customers, as we grow the airport to 18 million passengers over the next ten years. We are already on our way with our new larger relocated security area that is due to open in June 2024, which will then create more space to enable a wider choice of catering and retail outlets within our departure lounge, in the near future.”
Speaking to The Moodie Davitt Report, Harrison said later: “This is a hugely important store for us under our strategy to evolve into a one-stop-shop for travel essentials.
“Our mission is to help passengers find what they need at the airport quickly and easily, and so everything we do is through a travel lens, not a High Street lens.
“This is taking a 6,000sq ft store, the largest WHSmith anywhere, and putting together the categories in the right mix that represent the best possible essentials for travellers.”
He said that the blend of categories delivers benefits for consumers and for the airport.
“Combining the categories leads to the ‘halo effect’ of people shopping across all of them, whereas before they would have shopped health & beauty, or food or gifts in separate stores but not visited others. This format allows a lot more crossover of these categories. We find ATV is growing as shoppers can fill their basket with all of their purchases.”
Health & beauty occupies one end of the store in generous space, with beauty essentials, skin and suncare plus health supplements prominent. A pharmacy will eventually be introduced in this zone.
Health & beauty leads into gifting and souvenirs, food & drink snacking, meals to go, reading materials, electronics and coffee before self-service tills at the far end.
Harrison said: “Health & beauty is now around 25% of our mix where we have introduced it in our flagship stores. We have brought in some newer, trendy brands that appeal to younger shoppers. It is a fun category to work with.
“What the customers tell us is that this looks like a health & beauty shop, with relevant fixtures and categories, and they have confidence seeing WHSmith above the door. Another lesson was to focus on our range and build it around shopper missions for this environment as it is different to the High Street. We have to ask ourselves what people need and what solutions we can offer? We partner with Holland & Barrett for their ranges in vitamins to offer those solutions, for example.
“Where we get scale and an authoritative offer, customers who recognise it as a health & beauty shop buy into it and then shop across the other categories.”
He added: “We don’t want this to be a branded zone as you are then guided by the brands rather than the shopper mission, which includes those needs by destination, whether it’s suncare or mosquito spray. It’s about being credible in each category.
“We discuss a lot with the airport about sales density and making the space work, and this plays a role in doing that. At the airport people only want to visit one or two stores, so to have a quality range under one roof is invaluable – we have 3,000 SKUs in health & beauty for example.”
Destination is a further growth area for WHSmith at its flagship stores, with the company pledging to work more with Birmingham suppliers. The most popular item in the store’s early trading (within destination) is a range of Peaky Blinders caps – a nod to the well-known TV series – while another is a fridge magnet with a Birmingham skyline. Harrison noted that even London-themed merchandise accounts for around 10% of sales.
“We are testing and learning to get the balance between local and regional right,” he said.
On other spending trends, Harrison noted: “Today we are an essentials retailer rather than just defining ourselves as a news & books retailer. News & magazines have been in natural decline with so much going online so we’ve had to rethink our category strategy. Acquiring InMotion gave us access to consumer technology, which we have grown in WHSmith stores too.
“Chilled food was a category we didn’t do ten years ago; now we sell ten million meal deals a year in UK Travel. We also go beyond our traditional meal deals to healthy, plant-based options, premium options plus coffee, which also opens up breakfast as a day part in our stores as well. Food therefore is a strategic growth option.”
On partnership with Birmingham Airport, Harrison said: “We know that a lot has changed since COVID, and we worked with our airport partners to come through that tough period.
“People are turning up earlier, for example, and dwelling longer. That means that the way that airport terminals have been designed in the past doesn’t necessarily match the way that airport customers will want to use them in the future. There is going to be pressure on space for airports to get more F&B in because they need that offer for customers.
“This means some of the traditional parts of the mix have to work harder, whether it’s specialty retail or essentials. We need to understand airport aspirations – here in Birmingham they are investing in the infrastructure and they are going to be competing with London airports when all the connectivity that is planned [led by the HS2 rail link -Ed] comes along.
“So we have had to think about how we invest our £2 million here in this store in ways that meet the airport’s needs. What is important is that we have got a relationship that has enabled us to come up with something groundbreaking, and it’s great to have our flagship for this concept at Birmingham Airport.”
On the evolution of WHSmith in travel, he added: “We can do every single category within essentials, and we can do it with a lot of credibility now. So while you might say you need a retailer for electronics or health & beauty or destination, in fact we think you just need one.
“It is right for the customer and is right for airports, because they can make better use of their space. And we are the highest volume retailer largely in airports, we are very intensive in our use of space and therefore cash generative for airports in terms of income.”
Speaking for Birmingham Airport, Richard Gill said: “For WHSmith to open their latest flagship with an investment of £2 million demonstrates their commitment to Birmingham Airport and the journey of growth that we are going on.
“We worked with them through COVID even when our passenger traffic sank to 1 million per annum. We wanted our partners to survive and to invest with us in the future. We knew the volume would return and that we would be back on our way towards our goal of 18 million a year quite quickly. So we worked with Andrew Harrison and the team as they targeted that one-stop shopping experience. And they have delivered exactly on what they said they would do.”
On the formula to gather all essentials under one roof, Gill added: “We know time is precious to travellers so to have a single place to collect all their essentials allows them to shop here, then experience the other retail and food & beverage. We wanted Sense of Place, a clear feeling of being in Birmingham Airport, which they have also delivered. We never had a strong gifting business within WHSmith before; now we have the footprint to grow that category along the traditional CTN categories.
“We debated whether to have a Costa Coffee machine in the store when we have other coffee operators, but then think about the experience we are trying to offer.
“If we are giving travellers the opportunity to buy a meal deal or a book or shop in the health and beauty category, and they want a hot drink, why are we forcing them to go and queue elsewhere? We believe offering them that coffee alongside the other purchases that is the right thing to do.”
He said there had been no signs of spend being taken from other operators, especially in F&B.
“The food offer has not diluted sales in other casual dining units or at the new Starbucks. So all we see is a great experience within one essentials retailer.
“In fact, it’s a more premium environment than CTN has delivered in the past and some passengers have remarked that it’s more like a duty free store in that respect. We can do these essentials categories justice in this new space.
*Watch out for a follow-up story on Birmingham Airport’s ambitious infrastructure plans and expansion of food & beverage airside, coming shortly. ✈
