Why Cruise Retail is the opposite of Airport Retail

Your 5 minute learning.....

Travel retail..... it's all the same, right?

Wrong!

As you may know, travel retail is made up from 3 main channels (airports / airlines; downtown; cruise). In this short article, I want to explain the biggest differences between 2 of these, the world of cruise retail and airport retail, and how they are pretty much "Ying and Yang" from one another.

You see, airport retailing is by far the biggest part of the travel retail sector and therefore most brands, suppliers, services that are looking at our industry naturally focus their attention here, and with good reason! It's the primary revenue and passenger source.

But cruise retail is also a significant part of the industry, and a very fast growing one with industry growth expected to be around 14% over the next 5 years (CLIA, State of Industry Report 2024).

So, why does thinking about airport retailing simply not extend onto the oceans?

Well, let's first look at the most important differences > TIME and SPACE.

In an airport, travellers are generally very short of time. They are running to their plane, they are trying to get between flights as quickly as possible and most likely they are running late. This means that the travel retail shops in airport have to appeal to travellers fast, easily and simply. Conversion is key to success. This is shown with walk through stores that cater for 1-way traffic, open plan retail spaces that entice people in, and lots of digital marketing to catch attention. But on the other hand, airport retail stores are generally large, with plenty of space. They capture attention by being in the key locations and with a huge offering of products they are really convenient for the travellers. So, with little time, they are able to grab attention by being really convenient and efficient.

In a cruise ship on the other hand, guests are generally very relaxed with plenty of fun time on their hands. With 80% cruisers being onboard for at least 7 days with many sea days, relaxing and leisurely evenings to enjoy, guests have plenty of time to browse the onboard shops as a key part of their cruise experience. They are likely to come in to the stores on multiple occassions and get to know the onboard shop teams well. However, the shops are not large onboard cruise ships and as such, the convenience, the offer and the range of products is much less than you would find in an equivalent airport store. Products have to compete for space and as such most cruise ship shops are not able to sell as much as they would ideally like to be able to.

The second biggest difference is who is the shopping for?

Cruise ships are all about buy now, wear now, use now. Nearly all guests buying onboard want to use their item right away - new sunglaasses, new bag, new watch, new perfume. Cruise ship guests love to treat themselves as part of their holiday and will most likely be in the mood to think 'why not'! Purchasing for taking home or for gifting in a cruise ship is a much smaller part of the business, usually because of the immersion in the holiday and also because luggage space is generally pretty tight when you have already packed for your time onboard.

At airports, it is the opposite. Travellers are much less likely to want to treat themselves right away, because their mindset is in A > B, and as a result they are more likely to think about their destination rather than the immediate surroundings. As a result, gifting is much more important and much larger purchase motivation than in a cruise ship.

So how does this look? The graphic below shows the differences in the simplest way possible....

This generalistic but important differences to understand between the 2 channels is a simple and easy opening way to start to understand the differences.

However, there are of course, many other ways these 2 channels differ significantly. So many differences exist between these 2 channels that they really show themselves to be the 'Ying and Yang' of our industry in other important ways. If you are curious to build your understanding about how these should steer you in developing a clear strategy for cruise retail and most importantly, how to build the right training model to be relevant for the channel, then please come and get in touch (adrian@cruiseretailacademy.com).