Athens sales reach €86m as Hellenic prepares new branding and concepts

Hellenic Duty Free Shops (HDFS) is to unveil a new corporate identity, as well as introducing new travel-retail concepts both at airports and border stores, the company has revealed. The moves were detailed as HDFS announced sales through airport, border and port stores of €262.5m ($) for 2007, up by 4.3% on the previous year.

 

HDFS president George Koutsolioutsos reported that the retailer was almost ready to roll out a new corporate identity for its duty-free shops, starting with those at Athens International airport. The company will also start introducing new concepts in travel-retail, he said, both at airports and borders.

 

At the borders, the company is to take advantage of the increasing passenger traffic generated by the accession of neighbours Bulgaria and Romania to the EU by introducing a new “one-stop shop” format encompassing retail, catering, petrol and a recreation area. Koutsolioutsos said these outlets would be ready to roll out by the end of 2008.

 

The company’s first new airport retail concept, gadget store Triton, will open at Athens airport by May, and will be supplemented by additional concepts to be introduced throughout the year.

 

HDFS investor relations director Theodore Gitzos reported that sales at Athens airport reached €86m, up 10% on the previous year. At other airports sales totalled €84.5m, an increase of 17.6%.

 

The company’s border business, which was affected by the loss of duty-free petrol stations in 2006 and Romania and Bulgaria joining the EU last year, sales dipped 9%—although Gitzos said that excluding those two factors, like-for-like sales grew by 5%. Meanwhile port store sales grew by 19% to €18.5m and wholesale grew by 14% to €4.2m.

 

The accession of Romania and Bulgaria also affected the ratio of duty-free to duty-paid sales, with duty-paid sales representing 60% of the business compared to 50% last year. Total duty-free sales dipped by 17%—although discounting the loss of petrol stations the loss was only 15% and discounting EU accession sales grew by 5.3%. Total duty-paid sales grew by 26.5%.

 

Spend per passenger improved marginally by 0.7% to €10.81, spend per customer grew by 2.1% to €39.82 and penetration dipped slightly to just over 27%.

 

HDFS operates on a long-term concession at Greece’s state-owned airports, where its rent represents up to 5% of sales, and has the travel-retail concession at privately-owned Athens International airport—where its rent is equivalent to 25% of sales—until 2013.