Travel retail’s hidden opportunity

During TFWA Cannes, Oliver Wyman highlighted a US$5bn growth opportunity for travel retail if shopper conversion keeps pace with growing passenger numbers. Whilst the industry is searching for innovative ways to fix this conversion issue — through unique activations, immersive shopping experiences and discovery-led shopping — travel retail risks trying to solve the harder problem before solving the easier one.

Every year, the travel retail industry loses millions through rectifiable execution failures. Fixing these represents a significant growth opportunity in itself, and one that doesn't necessarily require heavy investment into innovation or activations — acting as a simple solution hiding in plain sight.

The challenge isn't simply getting more people through airport stores; it's converting more of the opportunity that already exists. With significant willingness to shop still present amongst travellers, the industry needs to understand what is preventing that willingness from converting into sales — and how much of that comes down to what shoppers actually encounter in-store.

That starts with making sure products are available, visible, correctly priced, appropriately ranged, promoted and positioned when those shoppers arrive. Because attracting a shopper into the store has little impact if poor execution prevents them from buying once they’re there. This makes execution an integral part of the US$5bn growth conversation.

The problem

Global airport traffic reached 9.8bn passengers in 2025, with 10bn forecast for 2026 (+2.3%). Yet, as TFWA President Sarah Branquinho powerfully asserted during Cannes' opening conference, travel retail can no longer rely on automatic growth. Whilst passenger numbers continue to grow, spend per passenger has not kept pace. Therefore, the opportunity isn't simply to attract more travellers into travel retail; it is to extract more value from the traffic that already exists.

This is evident in the decline in average duty-free sales per traveller. Oliver Wyman identified a US$0.52 decline between 2019 and 2025. There may be more passengers, but they aren't spending as much. Applied across 9.8bn passengers, Oliver Wyman calculated the decline to represent approximately a US$5bn missed opportunity.

Converting the shoppers already there

Oliver Wyman's workshop on Opportunities in Customer Growth pinpointed strategies to address this gap, including engaging consumers with unique experiences and inviting discovery through store layouts. Arguably though, before investing further into attracting and exciting new shoppers, we should look at the opportunity amongst the shoppers already there.

Appetite to travel and spend remains strong — 45% of travellers feel more confident spending on travel. And, as identified by Mondelēz World Travel Retail's research, whilst only 28% of travellers currently shop duty free, more than half of non-buyers say they are open to it. So, the industry's challenge isn't simply generating more traffic. More importantly, it must become better at converting the opportunity that growing traffic creates. It needs to turn existing willingness to shop into actual sales.

Interestingly, amongst Oliver Wyman’s calls to ‘Invite, Surprise and Engage’ tomorrow’s traveller sat another, perhaps less glamorous, instruction: ‘Fix the basics.’ Whilst immersive experiences, evolving assortments and discovery-led stores understandably captured attention in Cannes, this final point should not be overlooked. There is little point investing in an incredible experience designed to encourage discovery only for its commercial potential to be undermined because the product a shopper wants is unavailable, poorly positioned or inadequately represented on the shelf.

The fundamentals may not be the most glamorous part of the travel retail growth conversation, but they are the foundation upon which every activation, innovation and experience depends. Before asking how we can give shoppers more reasons to buy, the industry should make sure it isn't losing sales for reasons that are already within its control.

The commercial value hidden in basic execution can be substantial. Shelftrak worked with a leading global alcohol brand to understand where gaps between its expected and actual store-level execution were costing sales.

Based on the brand’s market position, its global share of total alcohol shelf space should have been around 11%. But Shelftrak’s analysis found multiple locations where the brand was under-spaced against its regional targets — and ultimately under-trading relative to its market share.

By identifying those gaps store by store, Shelftrak was able to show where additional space was needed to bring execution back towards regional share targets. Closing the identified space gaps represented an estimated c.US$8 million in additional annual retail sales opportunity from space alone. Yet space was only one part of the opportunity.

Shelftrak also assessed price and promotion execution across the network, benchmarking the brand against its key competitors. This identified instances of both overpricing, where the brand risked losing conversion, and underpricing, where potential margin was being left on the table. Correcting these inconsistencies represented a further c.US$1 million opportunity.

Distribution presented another significant gap, with stores identified where the brand’s assortment fell below the appropriate benchmark for that location.

Taken together, the scale of the opportunity was significant: c. US$13 million in potential additional annual retail sales for one global brand, sitting within existing execution across space, distribution, price and promotion. More importantly, Shelftrak’s analysis turned that opportunity into something actionable — identifying where value was being lost, what those gaps were worth and where the brand should act first.

Critically, these opportunities do not depend on recruiting an entirely new audience. They exist within the stores and networks brands are already operating in — the opportunity comes simply from better execution.

Solving the execution gaps

Identifying that execution is falling short is only the first step. The more important questions for brands are: where is it falling short, what is that failure worth and where should we act first?

This is where Shelftrak's Perfect Store approach comes in. By defining what good execution should look like and measuring individual stores against it, brands can identify where reality falls short of intention — across space, distribution, price, promotion and other critical execution measures.

But not every gap is equally valuable to fix. Shelftrak's Size of Prize modelling puts an estimated commercial value against those failures, helping brands move from “we have an execution problem” to “these are the problems worth fixing first.”

That changes execution from a compliance conversation into a growth conversation. A missing listing, insufficient space or poorly executed promotion can look relatively insignificant in one store. Across tens or hundreds of locations, those individual failures can accumulate into millions in unrealised opportunity.

And that is perhaps the contribution missing from much of the conversation in Cannes. The industry knows it needs to improve conversion but what it also needs is the ability to diagnose exactly where conversion is being lost at store level, quantify what those failures are worth and build action plans around the opportunities that matter most.

Fix first. Then innovate.

This isn't an argument against innovation, discovery or experience. Travel retail absolutely needs to attract tomorrow's shopper, and Cannes demonstrated some incredibly exciting ways in which the industry is doing so.

But these solutions cannot compensate for a shopper being unable to find the product they came for, missing the promotion or walking past a poorly executed space.

Before travel retail invests in creating another reason to buy, it should make sure it isn't losing the reasons to buy that already exist.

The fastest route towards closing today's US$5bn opportunity may therefore begin with converting more of the shoppers travel retail has already won.