The travel retail market was amongst the most sectors most heavily hit by the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two years due to various closed borders and travel bans being implemented worldwide, but in recent months the industry in APAC has reported healthy recovery across the board as regional and international borders started opening, including for foods and beverages.
“International Air Transport Association (IATA) figures for February this year have shown good grounds for optimism [with] global traffic having recovered to more than half its pre- pandemic level at minus 45.5% versus February 2019,” Tax Free World Association (TFWA) President Erik Juul-Mortensen said at the recent TFWA Asia Pacific Live event in Singapore.
“The list of countries across the region opening up to vaccinated travellers in 2022 includes Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam, and others may well join them in the coming months. [Travel retail] and duty free sales is also rebounding at a rate that is very encouraging for an industry that up till recently, faced an existential threat from the impact of COVID-19.”
Within the travel retail market, alcohol and chocolate brands have always been amongst the most prominent sectors, particularly when it comes to duty free sales at airports – but in order to not just continue this success but also grow beyond current achievements, there is a need for even the most prominent of brands to keep up with current trends driving the wider F&B industry.
“The 2020s is essentially a strategic inflection point for all of today’s corporations, a period that will make or break firms regardless of how big or successful they have been before this,” Innovators Institute Founding President Charlie Ang said at the event.
“This is what we call the Fusion Era, where we are in the midst of a shift from previous megatrends driving global development such as urbanisation and globalisation to new…