airport beauty

TRP Travel Retail Style Index: December 2020



Clé de Peau Beauté Luminizing Face Enhancer

Welcome to the latest travel retail column for DRG by Alison Farrington aka The Retail Planner (TRP)

As global travel slowly picks up, we look at the business and shopping trends of the travel retail world. Recent highlights include the launch of beauty retail ‘café’ destinations in Hamad Airport, Doha and a focus on exclusive duty-free products in Hainan, where Chinese consumers continue to ‘revenge spend’ their way out of the pandemic, while domestic travel is their only option.


1/ BEAUTY RETAIL-TECH ‘CAFÉ’ CONCEPTS. L’Oréal
has launched two ‘phygital’ retail concepts at Hamad Airport, Doha. The new retail-tech destinations – from Lancôme and YSL Beauté – sit next door to each other as one beauty department within the Qatar Duty Free retail space.

The Lancôme concept features a French apartment-inspired décor and the addition of bar stool seating gives a luxury café atmosphere. The counters offer interactive touchpoints where customers can personalise their purchases. It’s the first store in the brand’s EMEAI (Europe, Middle East, Africa, India) division to launch Lancôme’s new Shade Finder tool – the skin tone measurement technology that can identify up to 22,500 shades for foundation matching. (more…)



Ask Alison: Is it time for indie beauty brands to get in on duty free shopping?



Niche beauty Duty Free airport beauty Dezeen

Earlier this week, independent beauty brand Charlotte Tilbury made its airport retail debut at World Duty Free in London Heathrow. The week before, the eponymous brand was one of four indie beauty companies (alongside Anastasia, Hourglass and POLA) to be showcased within the DFS downtown store T-Galleria at Galaxy, Macau.

It’s about time these types of self-made or direct-to-consumer beauty upstarts joined the action within the travel retail space. (more…)



Airports want your beauty dollars



Susana Chaves

A few years ago I was obsessed with the concept of ‘airport fashion’. A craze originating in Korea, it was about dressing up for the airport, shopping up a storm in duty free and documenting it all on social media. Back then we were witnessing the rise of K Fashion, street style and the experiential economy, all merging in a retail sweet spot for airports to reposition themselves as luxury shopping malls. In fact, so great was this opportunity that travel retail came to be known as ‘the sixth continent’, with a billion consumers passing through it.

Fast-forward five years and it’s beauty’s turn to grab the spotlight and the um, travellers cheques. (more…)