Digital Duty Free with a local touch

Whether called Duty Free or Travel Retail: Shopping at airports is lucrative for retailers – and immune to the online shopping trend. The global market leader Dufry from Basle relies heavily on digital information media. The flagship store in Cancun in Mexico is no exception. Florian Rotberg was on site.

The Mexican airport Cancun is one of the busiest airports in Latin America. Recently, the new Terminal 4 was opened, which mainly handles flights to North America, but also flights to all of Latin America. The digital travel retail store concept that Dufry implemented there for the first time in Latin America is remarkable. invidis inspected the 1,900 square meter retail area twice within a year to see how the concept performs in daily operations.

To cut a long story short – we love it. Dufry finds the right balance between global product offering and local touch. Unlike other airports, the new terminal in Cancun offers enough space for a walk-through duty free concept. The new terminal has the necessary ceiling height and the duty free’s location directly behind the security checkpoint enables relaxed shopping. But what is remarkable is the intelligent use of LED and other digital touch points, which make the travel retail store in Cancun exceptional.

The new generation store concept uses digital media to attract the attention of walk-in customers, guiding them unconsciously to the shelves so that they interact with the products. Digital touchpoints are designed to provide a personalized shopping experience.

LED bands and LED-wrapped columns as well as interactive touch points and bar types on the shelves allow more flexible communication with the customer. It can also be adapted to different nationalities depending on arrivals and departures. The content – language and advertised products – is tailored to the specific preferences of the constantly changing passenger profiles to increase the communication impact – and of course to increase sales.

The new shop concept is very flexible: customers can even be reached with combined audio and screen campaigns. For example, six brands can use all screens in the entire store exclusively with their advertising. These total domination moments work especially well because only one campaign can be seen on both the columns and the LED strips for 30 seconds.

The duty-free shop in Terminal 4 is designed as a walk-through zone. With well-known design elements of Mexican culture, such as tiles and tequila, it conveys a strong local touch. The focus is on two themes: the „Essence of Mexico“, which is located in a prime location in the shopping zone and offers a selection of local products such as tequila, mezcal and wine. In addition, there is the „Taste of Mexico“ with local sweets such as chocolate, natural vanilla, gourmet coffee, spicy sauces such as habanero, jalapeño and chipotle, saltworms, biscuits and Mexican ‚dulce de leche‘.

The checkout area is relatively small and is somewhat hidden behind the huge tequila area. But the space seems to be sufficient to serve the passenger flows even around noon at peak traffic time. By the way, in the morning hours, only national flights are handled and the duty-free area is closed.

But not everything is perfect, as can be seen in the tobacco section. The retail designer probably wanted to create a special touchpoint by integrating bartype screens into the shelving system. In August 2019, however, this idea seemed to have failed – the setup and content did not meet our expectations. No question, this is nothing that cannot be fixed. But a 2×6 wall with bartype displays seems like a waste of budget.