Opinion: Unwrapping the gifting opportunity

Carlos Granados sees three gifting opportunities with the festive season

In this guest column, we hear from Mondelez World Travel Retail Head of Global Sales Carlos Granados, who highlights the extensive opportunities presented by the gifting segment over the holiday season in travel retail.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: from Deepavali to Thanksgiving, Christmas to Chinese New Year, nowhere will you find such an extensive and universal gifting season than in global travel retail. It’s in the very ‘global’ nature of the channel, with airports, ferry terminals, cruises and border stores becoming international microcosms where passenger profile determines the holiday season relevance, rather than the dominant domestic holiday. The opportunity here is twofold: not only are more people travelling over this period, increasing the number of shoppers to engage in-store, but people are travelling to meet their loved ones, giving the unique opportunity to reach two consumers with one purchase.

Mondelez taps into the gifting spirit with its Toblerone Happy Holidays edition

With the gifting occasion touching multiple consumers on a personal level, shopper engagement and product innovation become equally important, providing exponential opportunities for the Trinity – let’s call them the Three Gifts.

The Gift of Giving

The first ‘gift’ is the product itself. According to the latest research from m1nd-set, gifting accounts for 43% of travel retail purchases. Additionally, travellers who purchase gifts are more likely to purchase travel retail-exclusive products, highlighting the value of continuously differentiating the travel retail offer with high-quality products that cannot be found anywhere else.

A good gift becomes a form of word-of-mouth marketing when delivered in a tangible way; in fact, it’s arguably a way to engage a potential traveller pre-trip.

With confectionery as the second most popular gifting category after souvenirs (arguably dabbling in souvenir territory as well, through Sense of Place products) and Toblerone as the channel’s number one chocolate brand, the brand’s award-winning and universally appealing seasonal exclusive ‘Happy Holidays’ products have successfully delighted travellers – and their loved ones – year on year.

The Gift of Experience

Then there is the in-store engagement, which should deliver an outstanding gifting experience for both gift giver and recipient. A satisfying, emotionally gratifying gifting experience can help build a connection and future loyalty with two or more consumers through a single transaction. The most effective way to do to this – which my colleague, Richard Houseago, discussed in a previous opinion piece – is through personalisation, actively involving the shopper in the creation of the gift while at the same time making the recipient feel special. Personalisation is essentially the emotionalisation of the shopping experience.

Personalised Toblerone sleeves can now be created in Chinese

Travel retail is a channel that demands constant innovation to engage an ever-evolving shopper profile. To actively involve shoppers in the gifting experience over the holidays, Toblerone activations are incorporating three distinct personalisation elements to maximize the gifting opportunity: the highly successful Toblerone sleeve printer, the classic Toblerone ribbon printer and personalised stickers to add to Toblerone Tiny bags. To reach even more shoppers this holiday season, the Toblerone sleeve printers have Chinese printing capabilities as well – particularly as the demographic is part of a market where 49% of travel retail purchases in 2019 were gifts.

The concept is catching, and gifting activations are spreading cheer across the channel, with Trinity collaborations becoming bigger, bolder and better every year. Diageo’s Johnnie Walker Gifting Studio with DFS and Singapore Changi Airport includes an array of bespoke gifting opportunities, from charms and ribbons to bags and gift tags. Another noteworthy example is beauty brand Jo Malone’s Galaxy of Gifts pop-up with World Duty Free at London Heathrow Airport, where shoppers can customise their fragrance bottles with London charms and have an on-site calligrapher decorate their fragrance boxes.

Personalised gifting in travel retail now goes beyond confectionery

The Gift of the Season

This leads me nicely into the third, less tangible gift: the spirit of gifting that infuses the channel. These activations fill airports with an atmosphere of celebration and excitement which elevates the overall travel experience, for the benefit of brands, retailers, airports and consumers alike. When we, as a Trinity, effectively harness that spirit, we become an inherent part of travellers’ holiday experience and of the special time that they share with their family and friends.

This intangible element – one that touches shoppers’ hearts – is a vital part of Mondelez World Travel Retail’s approach to driving more shoppers and more spend more Often, in line with our ‘Delighting Travelers’ category vision. We’re not just looking to sell shoppers a product: we’re looking to provide them with a full experience. This is how we differentiate the travel retail channel and make it the go-to place for gifting this season.

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