On stage at Aviation-Event 2025 CLJ, talking digital innovation in airport retail
If you have been to whichever aviation conference recently the words “innovation” and “digitalization” have surely popped up at some point in the program.
These are often applied to processes which involve the air side of the experience, whether airline booking paths or flight operations. However, the Aviation-Event 2025 CLJ conference, which took place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania on March 21, 2025, provided an excellent opportunity to discuss innovation in one particular aspect of the air travel experience which is often overlooked.
Perhaps because it’s a business model that is so strongly rooted in the tangible, bricks-and-mortar, airport experience, little is heard about the digitalization of airport retail. Is there more than meets the eye, though?
How the airport retail market leader approaches digitalization
I had the chance to ask this question on stage, during one of the conference sessions, to one of the leaders of the global airport retails business, Frédéric Chevalier, deputy CEO of Lagardere Travel Retail.
Now, you may not be entirely familiar with Lagardere Travel Retail, but if you have travelled by plane or train recently, you are likely to have shopped or dined at one of their hundreds of establishments worldwide. This French company (a subsidiary of the Lagardere conglomerate) manages convenience and duty free stores, cafés and restaurants at nearly 300 airports and 700 trains stations around the world, turning more than €7.6B in revenue per year.
So, what’s up with airport retail digitalization?
Not much actually and Mr. Chevalier did not shy away from admitting it. Not every business needs to be digital at its core after all and some actually find their strength in knowing exactly how to handle the physical, tangible aspects of the travel experience.
Mr. Lagardere highlighted his "no-nonsense" approach to innovation and digitalization.
The typical customer of Lagardere Retails is a time-sensitive traveler which is moving through an often stressful environment (the airport) and who prioritizes speed and convenience above all else. This unique operating context shapes their innovation philosophy in an important way: the technologies that have proven most valuable to Lagardere's operations are those that reduce friction and enhance existing customer behaviors.
Self-checkout machines fall in this category, as do digital re-ordering systems in cafés and restaurants, allowing seated customers to order additional items without leaving their table
Digitalization has also helped streamline and improve the operational efficiency of some some B2B processes behind the scenes.
But Mr. Chevalier also pointed out to some failed experiments with heavily-hyped retail technologies which have proven totally ineffective in their environment: geolocation-based SMS marketing at airports, for example, once perceived as a smart form of mobile marketing, is perceived as intrusive and unnecessary. Travelers already know what shops are available!
Another case are digital marketplaces which aggregate airport shops and allow people to place orders before their trips saw minimal transactions and just added complexity to the shopping experience and diverted valuable resources.
Likewise, loyalty programs and apps make little sense in an environment where the customer relationship belongs to the airport rather than the retailer (which, like Lagardere Retail does, may operate under several different brands at different locations)
Ultimately Lagardere Retail's success hinges on understanding the airport traveler's mindset: most business occurs once the traveler has cleared security and other control points and is ready to relax before the flight. However, there is a hard time constraint, so service efficiency is paramount: slow service in cafés or shops can cause travelers to get into the dilemma of either ordering or missing their flights!
In short: the physical retail environment of the airport demands pragmatic innovation that solves real problems rather than implementing technology for its own sake!