INDIA. The Trinity Forum 2016 closed on a powerful note in Mumbai yesterday as speaker after speaker spoke candidly about the dual threats and opportunities offered by e-commerce.
We’ll bring you a full report on this week’s event next week and an extensive picture gallery of surely one of the most vibrant, engaging and focused Trinity Forums in its 13-year history.
Day two’s speakers provided an engaging range of perspectives that, combined, helped deliver a more complete industry picture – and also sparked a spirited debate. In particular, the discussions consolidated the themes highlighted on day one by providing probably the most detailed examination of passenger profiling and behaviour ever seen at a travel retail event.
The Moodie Davitt Report President Dermot Davitt launched the day by thanking Mumbai International Airport Limited and GVK for an extraordinary Bollywood-themed Gala Dinner. Stefano Baronci, Director, Economics, ACI World, then led the ACI World session: ‘Evaluating how passenger satisfaction drives airport non-aeronautical revenues.’
In a Trinity Forum exclusive launch, Baronci presented ACI’s latest profiling initiative, ACI Passenger Personas. The series of six personas highlighted the increasing depth and sophistication of passenger profiling methodology – and opened up the intriguing opportunity for airports and retailers to share a sharper picture of the key target travellers.
Baronci’s startling suggestion that an increase (1%) in customer satisfaction can significantly out-perform corresponding expansion in retail space or rise in traffic was a pivotal finding that sparked much interest (and a surge of online questions via the Forum’s live audience question format).
Guy Stephenson, Chief Commercial Officer, London Gatwick Airport, consolidated the passenger profiling theme as he emphasised the need for an ever-closer focus on the consumer. But he said that further breakdown of the passenger was needed, noting, “It’s not just about who the passenger is, it’s also about the time of day”.
Equally articulate perspectives from Saurabh Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, Hyderabad Duty Free Retail Limited, GMR Group, and Chris Rayner, Chief Executive Officer, SSP Asia-Pacific further developed the discussion. Rayner emphasised that a stronger F&B offer does not cannibalise retail spend – quite the opposite. Kumar further expanded the debate on ACI’s fascinating ‘1% solution’ by citing Hyderabad’s experience of a +6% rise in ASQ score that supported growth in non-aeronautical revenue of twice that rate.
The subsequent debate on the challenges and opportunities of social & digital media and e-commerce led Eugene Barry, Executive Vice President, Commercial & Communications, Dubai Airports, to call for the industry to “stand up, stand out” and create compelling reasons to shop. He expressed frustration at the industry’s weakness in focusing on the whole customer journey. Profiling is vital and “airports need complete integration of approach across the whole airport journey… a cohesive approach”.
Amit Butani, Founder, DutyFree.Buzz, re-ignited the previous day’s intense analysis of pricing and unveiled his new online price comparison site (DutyFree.Buzz). He also previewed a deeply ambitious new initiative called Proxy, which seeks to encourage travellers not using their allowances to purchase on behalf of others. Both aspects of his presentation generated heavy audience feedback.
Peter Zottl, Vice President Travel Retail, Swarovski, emphasised the power of embracing digital – and concluded his highly entertaining session with the point that pricing is a card that can be trumped by skilled customer service. He underlined how Swarovski had reinvented itself time and again over its history and was doing exactly the same in the digital era.
In a superb addressing of the question ‘How should today’s airports view the travelling consumer?’, Glyn Williams, General Manager, Retail, Sydney Airport, shared the airport’s stunning new passenger experience, built on reaching the customer “from roadway to runway’. Additionally, Sydney’s ‘straight path’ walk-through strategy was a major talking point.
The final Trinity Panel promised a straight-talking look at the future and arguably The Trinity Forum’ s standout presentation by Kai Schmidhuber (below), Executive Vice President Multi-Channel, Fraport, stunned the audience with the depth, foresight and quality of execution of the digitally-powered experience at Fraport.
“Mobile devices are changing the way we all live,” he said. “We need an eco-system that combines your online and off-line worlds – we need new channels to reach them and it’s going to be a very digital journey.”
He noted that “attention is the new currency” – and an ominous warning that “some of you have already missed the plane”. But the big talking point of his presentation was a trial three-way partnership between Lufthansa, Frankfurt Airport and Gebr Heinemann, in which passengers can browse and shop in the air from the entire ground-shop range and collect on delivery. Moderator Martin Moodie saluted the initiative as a long-awaited “game changer” and questioned Schmidhuber closely on how such a partnership came about,
In another outstanding presentation, Michael Guenoun, Managing Director Travel Retail Asia, Cartier, followed that with a warning on the impact of the Chinese ‘daigou’ shopping phenomenon and said the industry must focus on the experiential, not just the transactional. Travel retail remained as relevant as ever, he said, it just needed to be approached and executed the right way for a luxury brand such as Cartier.
Guenoun said: “Travel retail is a fantastic route for brands to communicate with the customer”, adding later, “Make the journey less of a process and more of an experience.”
The irrepressible, entertaining and informative Paul Topping, Director & Board Member, Flemingo International, then emphasised that the fundamentals of knowing your customer remain paramount.
Completing a quality quartet, long-time travel retail expert and former L’Oréal Group executive Stefan Dembinski expressed his personal views on the need for evolution. He brought the debate full circle from yesterday’s ‘climate change’ theme with his call for the industry to “adopt and adapt”.
All presentations will be made available to paying delegates in coming days while October’s issue of The Moodie Davitt Report Print Edition will assess the key take-outs from this seminal event.
In coming days we will unveiling exciting news relating to The Trinity Forum 2017.
