Airports are evolving into sophisticated retail destinations, providing brands with opportunities to engage high-value customers. Natalie Reid, Head of Loyalty at BBD Perfect Storm, explores how curated airport experiences are redefining the travel journey.
THE NEW HEIGHTS OF LUXURY
Airports are now offering brands a passport to the pinnacle of luxury retail.
Shopping experiences are changing rapidly, with consumers pickier than ever about where and why they spend.
PwC’s spring 2025 data shows that 70 percent of consumers expect to spend less in the next three months, whilst Deloitte data found that 90 percent of Middle Eastern customers prefer online shopping. However, for luxury brands, maintaining high-value, in-store customers is essential.
As retailers rush to capture and keep up with dwindling foot traffic, they’re increasingly investing in a new premium shopping hub: airports. Luxurious pop-ups, in-flight shopping, and retail orientated airline partnerships are shaping a new world of commerce and opening up fresh opportunities for brands to create loyalty touchpoints beyond traditional stores.
FLIGHTS OF FANCY
The duty-free market is growing fast, but it’s in the luxury space that the most opportunities lie.
Brands like Burberry, BVLGARI, and Coach are investing in creating curated brand moments for a globally-minded audience, as they enter ‘holiday mode’. Holidaymakers are naturally open to new experiences, relaxed, and optimistic, and the airport offers brands a chance to play a key role in the joy of their holiday.
Once viewed simply as a place to pass time, duty-free has evolved into a high street for highfliers, and travellers’ luxury of time is the perfect forum for brands to offer delight, indulgence, and unexpected experiences that will convert to high-value sales.
Last year, Qatar Duty Free (QDF) hosted the Dior Luxury Beauty Retreat, a groundbreaking duty-free activation that offered passengers a spa-like experience. The luxe event moved beyond sales to emulate the Dior lifestyle, creating meaningful branded moments for shoppers whilst they waited for their flights.
With thoughtful experiences like Dior’s, duty-free offers fertile ground for retailers to unlock emotional loyalty by moving beyond deals and transactions, building real affinity from high-value shoppers.
DESTINATION SHOPPING
The magic doesn’t have to start at the security gates. Increasingly, duty-free shopping is something that travellers anticipate as a key part of their journey – a destination within a destination.
Brands in this space are focusing on unique experiences, such as exclusive product drops, bespoke pop-ups, and competitions for shoppers. There’s always something unexpected to experience.
It’s a world of excitement that inspired QDF’s new brand tagline, ‘You’ve Arrived’.
In BBD Perfect Storm’s work with the brand, the 25th birthday campaign centred on the unbeatable experience of the world’s best airport shopping, showcasing the sense of awe and excitement in a campaign video that ran across social platforms, digital out-of-home, and in the airport itself.
This unique shopping experience offers brands and shoppers a new world of luxury experiences, one so exclusive that you need a passport and ticket to gain entry.
Imagine passengers choosing longer layovers, or arriving at the airport earlier just to indulge and discover their favourite stores. It’s already happening, and brands are keen to invest in this vision. QDF sales are rising 12 percent year-on-year across more than 200 retail and food and beverage outlets.
As increasingly seamless travel-retail ecosystems integrate airline, airport, and retail models, passengers gain access to 5-star shopping experiences.
With a holy trinity of customer insights and experiences, brands like QDF can power cross-brand collaborations, meet shoppers where they are, and offer a more connected loyalty ecosystem across the whole travel journey. Retailers that bring their brands to life in the terminal can continue to inspire passengers until they disembark.
Last Christmas, Chanel created a masterclass on how to host a holiday event. Designing a festive, interactive experience filled with personalised Chanel gifts, gift wrapping, grottos, and a snow-dusted forest in the middle of a terminal, Chanel’s Winter Tale brought winter to millions of travellers in a three-month airport takeover.
Rather than just offering a moment of delight, the luxury brand took the experience one step further. Passengers arriving at Hamad International Airport received a dedicated Chanel email inviting them to explore the wonderland, whilst passengers jetting out of the airport received a dedicated Chanel holiday campaign film to keep the magic of the activation fresh in their mind.
The experience may have been unmissable, but the invitation made it an event in a way that other retail sites simply couldn’t have offered.
MORE THAN MILES
Frequent fliers have the potential to be high-value shoppers for duty-free brands, particularly high-end retailers.
Typically brand loyal, they already collect air miles with their favourite airlines and gravitate towards luxury experiences. As frequent flyers begin to see airport retail as part of their travel ritual, luxury retailers showing up in these spaces can build recurring engagement, strengthening an existing brand relationship and unlocking long-term, real loyalty.
Qatar Airways has recently launched its Privilege Club Pro subscription service, combining the retail and in-flight experiences for its top customers. Members can now earn and redeem Avios across QDF’s retail network, blurring the line between travel and lifestyle rewards and incentivising passengers to make the most of the innovative retail experiences available to them.
What makes duty-free such a powerful retail hub is also what makes a loyalty scheme so powerful: exclusivity, luxury, and a brand-led experience. By embracing the full airport ecosystem, including the magic of duty-free shopping, airlines can move beyond ‘deal loyalty’ and meaningfully enhance passengers’ experience from door to door.
As retailers take notice of the airport opportunity, they can do much more than just open a duty-free store. Like Chanel and Dior, they should bring exciting, new and meaningful experiences to make the most of the duty-free opportunity.
We’re seeing the rise of a truly premium destination for modern shoppers and travellers, and it’s raising the bar for retail experiences across the board. The sky’s no longer the limit.
