Brussels retail revamp postponed after revenue recovery

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The airport authority will wait to see if a reversal in the fortunes of shops at Brussels International airport's Schengen terminal continues before deciding whether to alter the stores

Brussels International Airport Co has shelved plans to reshuffle shops in the Topaz area of its new Schengen terminal after a strong end to 2003. The shops ? Kipling, Sunglasses Hut, an interiors outlet and a store specialising in the Belgian delicacy tapioca ? lie between the main shopping area and catering facilities on the upper level of the concourse, and had suffered low sales for the three months prior to December.

BIAC retail & catering manager Myriam Windey told TRW that a plan to alter the area would be postponed for a few months to see if the recovery continues. The decision was part of a retail review at Brussels carried out over the winter, and Windey said that strategies had also been penned for other areas of the airport.

?We have plans for the non-Schengen terminal, the oldest in use here,? she said, ?although they will not be implemented until 2005 as we want to examine the affect that countries acceding to the European Union will have on our traffic this year. With 10 countries joining there are likely to be more passengers, but at the same time we are not certain of whether we will be able to sell duty-free to all of them. We are preparing for the worst in consultations with our retail partners, and we will have worked out a contingency plan for the abolition of duty-free within the next few months.?

Brussels fared significantly better in 2003 than in 2002, when it lost almost 50% of its passenger traffic as a result of the bankruptcy of national carrier Sabena and the global economic crisis. Windey reported that, despite travel suffering ?every calamity apart from a grasshopper plague? in 2003, international passenger numbers grew by 5%. The majority of the gain was in originating and departing traffic, a significantly higher-spending segment than transfer traffic, the main victim of the 2002 drop.