Travel Retail’s Biggest Opportunity: Brands And Retailers Must Fix The Broken Basics
7 minutes read
Introduction by: Peter Marshall
This is a very punchy feature by Garry Stasiulevicuis, Shelftrak’s Managing Director, who I am delighted to announce will be making regular monthly contributions to TRunblocked.com.
Here, he makes a very strong and elegantly argued case that brands need to refocus their approach to Travel Retail and return to getting the fundamentals right. A commercial imperative in today’s marketplace? Absolutely. And this blog provides very clear guidelines about how to do just that..
Travel retail is often celebrated as a stage for global brands. A place to unveil exclusives, wow international travellers, and cement brand prestige. In conjunction with retailers, many brands do this brilliantly as they mix spectacular installations with thoughtful, well-executed retail.
But too often, amid the scramble to innovate, launch and impress, brands lose focus on what retailing is fundamentally about: winning at the shelf, day in and day out.
This isn’t just another observation. It’s a hard commercial truth backed by data, hundreds of store visits already conducted this year, and shopper feedback. In travel retail, the opportunity to get the basics right is both significant and highly achievable. And when done well, it unlocks growth that far exceeds the return of many one-off activations.
Activations absolutely have their place – they build brand equity, create memorable shopper experiences, and they can and do deliver powerful short-term commercial uplifts.
However, they shouldn’t come at the expense of getting the fundamentals right. Ensuring core retail execution is consistently strong provides the critical foundation upon which activations can thrive. Without this, even the best activation risks underperforming, as shoppers still rely on clear, well-stocked, and well-merchandised fixtures to drive purchase decisions.
The travel retail difference: fewer stores, bigger stakes
Unlike domestic markets, where brands must execute across thousands of stores to drive scale, travel retail is strikingly concentrated. For many liquor, tobacco and confectionery brands, a huge percentage of their global travel retail business happens in just 100 or maybe 150 or so key stores across the top 70 airports worldwide. Something evidenced by our own work in the channel.
Imagine a domestic category team at a major FMCG business. They grapple with thousands of Tesco, Carrefour or Walmart locations to deliver visibility, availability, and brand consistency. Each store represents a tiny slice of total volume. With so many outlets, absolute perfection or even high, consistent standards can be elusive.
Now flip that into travel retail. Your entire global travel retail volume – and your entire brand showcase to international consumers – could be sitting in a carefully selected number of stores.
Of course, it’s important to recognise that travel retail is far from straightforward. This channel brings its own unique operational and commercial complexities: transient shoppers, constantly changing passenger flows, security restrictions, staffing variability, even supply chain headaches tied to regulations. All of these factors make it uniquely challenging to simply “retail well.”
But these realities shouldn’t become an excuse for neglecting the fundamentals. If anything, they’re a call to double down on flawless basics – to ensure that amid all the volatility, the core elements that drive sales are always locked in. That’s how brands turn complexity into a competitive advantage.
That’s the gift of focus.
It means travel retail teams have the rare chance to pour over every shelf, every fixture, every category, crafting strategies and executing plans with forensic precision. The kind of surgical approach domestic teams could only dream of.
The basics drive the business
This is why it’s so surprising that, even with this concentration, some brands still let the fundamentals slip. Because it’s these basics – and not the one-off brand activations – that make or break commercial outcomes.
Let’s look at just four areas where execution of the basics can have extraordinary impact.
- Over-ranging: the silent profit drain
Over-ranging is a classic trap. Too many SKUs crammed into limited shelf space, muddying the brand story and overwhelming shoppers. It’s a common sight in travel retail – walls of similar products without a clear rationale.
In a recent article https://blog.shelftrak.com/gin-in-travel-retail-is-dead-long-live-gin/ we demonstrated how many stores across the globe were over-ranged in gin – offering too much choice and driving shopper paralysis.
In one of these stores, the Gin offer was a massive 127 SKUs. This example, (one of many stores above 90 SKUs), does no one any favours. Not shoppers, not buyers and certainly not the supply base.
Why is this an example of over-ranging?
Looking at the data from this store:
Classic & London Gins: 58 SKUs
Citrus, Berry & Pink Gins: 31 SKUs
Unique Flavours: 15 SKUs
Niche, Local & Experimental: 23 SKUs
This means shoppers are faced with over 100 gins, many of which are only subtly differentiated, crowding the shelf and masking truly distinctive offers.
Why does this matter?
Because over-ranging often leads to:
Stock-outs on high-velocity SKUs. Too much space is given to slower movers, tying up inventory and reducing availability on the lines that actually drive sales.
Confused shoppers. Choice overload means shoppers struggle to navigate the offer, often default to safe picks, or worse – walk away without purchasing.
Operational headaches. More SKUs means more complexity, from forecasting to replenishment, increasing the risk of errors and inefficiencies across the supply chain.
The case for trimming to around 60 SKUs
Rationalising ranges in these overpopulated segments is proven to drive sales. By reducing each segment by 40% to 50% in size (using a tailored, considered and data- led approach), you still deliver a compelling spectrum of choice, niche and price progression – but in a disciplined SKU strategy tailored by airport and shopper type.
This approach not only clears space for better display and brand storytelling, it turns the category into a showcase, making it easier for shoppers to explore, buy and trade up. Ultimately, it unlocks far more value than yet another campaign ever could.
Planogram compliance: the basics that pay big
Planograms are the blueprint of in-store success. Yet across global travel retail, it’s estimated (from the regular compliance audits performed at Shelftrak) that 50% to 60% of planograms are not executed as intended on the shop floor.
In a recent ShelfTrak audit for a confectionery brand across major hubs across key airports, only 38% of stores had fixtures matching the agreed planogram.
Why does this matter? Because better compliance isn’t just neat and tidy – it’s proven to drive sales. Studies consistently show that driving planogram compliance can add anywhere from +8% to +18% in incremental sales. That’s an uplift many brands chase through costly campaigns, when it could be captured simply by getting fixtures right.
This is exactly the kind of discipline that travel retail teams can enforce, because they’re dealing with 100 stores, not 1,000.
- Confusing price messages: clarity sells
Another overlooked basic is price communication. In many airports, you’ll see unclear pricing, inconsistent tags, misleading discounts, or contradictory buying messages that slow shoppers down or erode trust.
In recent store visits, we found several examples of where the same product, in the same store, was showing labels with different prices. In one example, the product showed different prices on the same fixture! Although the difference is minimal, it still raises questions in the eyes of the shopper.
Clean, consistent, compelling pricing is one of the simplest drivers of conversion. Yet it’s astonishing how often it’s left muddled, even in high-profile flagship stores.
- Missing price labels and out-of-stocks
Inevitably, store operations can face challenges, and unforeseen issues will impact the shop floor. How these are managed is critical – especially in travel retail environments like airports, where a shopper may only pass through the store once while on their vacation and never visit again.
Take missing price labels as an example. Without clear pricing, shoppers are left guessing. Only a small percentage of highly committed shoppers will bother to ask, while most will browse, quickly realise they can’t make an informed choice, and simply walk away. Price ticketing is a basic retail essential.
Out-of-stocks are another fundamental issue. Poor replenishment practices can significantly erode store standards. Retailers and brand teams need a clear plan for managing out-of-stocks to ensure displays are properly maintained and quickly corrected, avoiding unplanned substitutions that disrupt category presentation.
Equally important is considering the message sent to shoppers when filling gaps. For instance, a confectionery fixture temporarily filled with tobacco products can create confusing – even negative – impressions, affecting how shoppers feel about the store and its brands.
The myth of “more theatre = more sales”
None of this is an argument against big brand moments. Iconic displays, digital storytelling, immersive installations – these elevate travel retail, build brand equity, and create social buzz. But without the backbone of rock-solid fundamentals – right ranging, right fixtures, right price messages, right availability – these efforts rarely pay off as intended.
Some brands treat travel retail as purely a brand theatre platform. They pour millions into short-lived stunts, with beautiful creative work that makes headlines but doesn’t drive long-term, scalable commercial returns. Worse, sometimes these campaigns distract from – or even disrupt – the everyday mechanics that actually close sales.
Travel retail teams can afford to be obsessive
This is precisely why travel retail should be the best executed channel in the entire business.
Brands and retailers are not managing thousands of stores like in domestic retail – often it’s the same handful of retail operators and a known group of flagship locations.
You can get to know each outlet intimately – understand what shoppers want, how staff interact, and identify where execution falls down – and fix it.
Many top-performing brands work with retailers to do this already. They audit frequently. They build direct relationships with retail operational teams. They equip field teams with apps and digital tools to track compliance. They collaborate to improve the basics that drive conversion. They see travel retail as an opportunity to perfect the basics – because they actually can.
The future: less stunts, more substance
If more brands approached travel retail this way – with a relentless focus on getting the basics absolutely right – the entire channel would look and perform differently.
Imagine walking into any top 100 travel retail store worldwide and finding:
✅ Shelves perfectly aligned to strategic planograms.
✅ Tight, shopper-relevant ranges that simplify choice.
✅ Clear, confidence-building pricing and promotions.
✅ Immaculate availability on core SKUs.
✅ Consistent, intuitive shopper messages that make it easy to buy.
That’s the travel retail that grows categories sustainably. That’s the channel that builds confidence and gives shoppers an easy shopping experience. Combine this with some of the amazing activations the channel delivers, and we’ll see more travellers becoming shoppers and more shoppers becoming buyers.
Final thought: your 100 stores deserve it
Because here’s the kicker: for many brands, these 100 or 150 stores drive 70–80% of their global travel retail turnover. If domestic teams had that luxury, they’d treat each outlet like a flagship.
So let’s stop relying on splashy moments alone to drive growth. Let’s make travel retail a masterclass in fundamentals. That’s how you turn a showcase into a commercial engine – and why, ultimately, getting the basics right in travel retail isn’t just smart. It’s the biggest untapped advantage many brands still have.
