Targeting the 'Me' generation - The Moodie Report

FROM THE EDITOR October/November 2006
Welcome to The Moodie Report. We hope
you’ll find this our most stimulating print
edition yet.
If so, we hope it’s partly down to the quality of the writing
– we think trade press should be both entertaining and
informed – but it will also be thanks to the fascinating
people and companies that feature in this issue, and the
stories they have trusted us to tell.
On one level, these are simply stories about our industry’s
niche within the travel business. But on another, they
are also tales of innovation and daring, of ambition
and courage.
One such story is that of Dubrovnik Airport, its duty free
shop and the people who work there. At little over €7
million in annual sales, it doesn’t rank among the heavyhitting
retail operations of the world. And at a cramped
300sq m, the shop isn’t likely to be shortlisted for any
industry awards in the near future. But its management
team takes as much pride in growing its business by double-digit
amounts – as it will this year – as the World Duty
Free team does at Heathrow, or the Dubai Duty Free
team does at Dubai International Airport.
In some ways, their achievement means even more. Less
than 15 years ago, when the rest of the trade in Europe
was fighting early sorties in a battle that would eventually
lead to intra-EU duty free abolition, the team at
Dubrovnik Airport were fighting for their lives. Between
October 1991 and October 1992 Serb shellfire bombarded
the villages along the southern Croatian coast –
and destroyed the airport.
When the soldiers left all that remained was a pile of rubble
and a crumbling runway. But defiant and proud, the
team at Dubrovnik Airport – all of whom were local to
the area, all of whom had lived without any income for a
year – immediately set about rebuilding their workplace.
The retail team – led by Croatian duty free legend
EDITOR’S
DESK
Nik ^ sa Milanović – breathed new life into the shop, and
their passion and dedication has maintained the growth
ever since.
Today Dubrovnik Airport is preparing for the next phase
of its development, with plans for a new terminal and a
700sq m duty free shop which will eventually lift sales
through the €10 million barrier (page 155). As The
Moodie Report discovered on a visit to Dubrovnik last
month, many of the same team – including Milanović –
are guiding the company, and there’s no sign of the passion
fading.
Passion is a quality again to the fore with Aelia Chairman
and CEO Michel Perol who talked to us at his Paris
office about his company’s journey to becoming a travel
retailer of global repute (page 49). Following Aelia’s
recent ground-breaking deal with Aéroports de Paris,
their joint venture will operate all the key retail concessions
across Paris Charles de Gaulle and Paris Orly from
1 January. It’s a monumental step and a rare example of
landlord and retailer working in a genuine framework of
risk and reward, with profits shared 50:50.
Just as importantly for Perol, we sense, that Paris base
gives Aelia the security to put its international ambitions
to the test. That appetite for expansion has been whetted
by its involvement at the business end of recent tenders
at Copenhagen and Sydney (the latter in joint venture
with James Richardson).
But how will it translate that vision and passion into victories
rather than close-run defeats? Won’t this midsized
French company, we ask Perol, simply lack the
firepower to muscle in at a Seoul Incheon or a Singapore
Changi once the big guns start firing?
With a wry smile Perol points us towards the example of
another medium-sized company that became a global
powerhouse. 20 years ago it operated only in France,
and wasn’t even a big name there. But it had ambition,
4 The Moodie Report