So, what about travellers? These are the billions of people that annually get on a plane or boat or train and who somehow pass by a travel retail store. They can’t buy anything in a Duty Free shop without first buying an international ticket. And to buy that ticket they are going to have to go to Travel Tech.
Fortunately, Travel Tech is not murky. It is one of the few industries that needs your personal data to facilitate the travel booking. BY LAW. Authorities need to know who you are, your ID and other information in order to issue the ticket. So we should be able to have confidence that, in this sector, the world of ‘Darcos’ has not been extended from alleged ‘political influencers’.
But, here lies the rub. Travel Tech may know everything about who is travelling – where and when – even perhaps where they went before. They know your age, gender and maybe even the reason for the trip. In effect Travel Tech know – almost to the hour and certainly to the day – when someone is going to walk through your airport, airline, cruise or ferry store. They know when you will arrive and even when you will likely reach downtown. And they know when you are coming back.
Just like the dark world of political promotion, this data is valuable. Very valuable and, apparently, much more convertible to a vote or a sale than those who are just looking around on Google or Yahoo. Search engines might give you exposure from their targeted ad lotteries, but no specifics related to the actual day of travel or the destination.
Whereas , there ’s a cost to all this data trading , which is seemingly trafficked on what appears to be a secondary market. Or it is put to good and proper use by those in the T ravel sphere to generate sales.
The re has been much talk about Digital at the Spring conference season for Travel Retail . Last week was ACI Europe in Tel Aviv, this week it’s IAADFS in Orlando and Passenger Terminal Exp o in Stockholm. Much tal k, certainly. And action? Well, not quite so much.
There is more than a glimmer of hope at Heathrow, at Budapest and on Singapore Airlines. Meanwhile others, notably Dufry, the world’s biggest airport travel retailer, stated that they do not want to be a digital company, rather a retailer that maximises retail.
The big question is: how do they intend to acquire all the traveller data traffic that is out there and maximise it to the full as a retailer? There’s another big conference season coming in the Autumn, so perhaps we will hear more from them and others at that time.
One thing is for sure. Travel Retail now needs to move fast – certainly faster than Google, who have already muscled in on flights and are about to make their move on Duty Free, too.