European trade index to launch soon

Gavin Lipsith

Print Article E-Mail Article E-Mail Author

On the eve of its first anniversary the European Travel Retail Council releases details of its forthcoming regional index

The first quarterly trend analysis of European travel-retail is to be launched in the next few weeks, the European Travel Retail Council (ETRC) revealed at a London press briefing this morning. The ETRC Index will study sales of liquor, tobacco, confectionery, cosmetics, fragrances and 'other' products at European travel-retail outlets, and the Council said it had been happy with the support from the region's operators.

"The project is near to fruition and we have about 70% of the market participating at this stage," said ETRC president (and Aer Rianta Retail director of retail) Frank O'Connell. "Our aim is to have at least 75%, as we feel this would present a truly representative picture of the European trade.

"We will launch it as a quarterly index of product category sales trends, and aim to develop it from there into a whole suite of industry trend analysis."

O'Connell said that as total confidentiality was a condition of participation, ETRC could not reveal which retailers had supported the project so far.

ETRC secretary general Keith Spinks added that the index would be a great asset to the association's lobbying efforts. He said: "One of the areas in which we have consistently been unable to impress the European institutions is in providing an indication of the scale of the industry. Although the index does not put a figure on that, it does go some way to showing that the industry does contribute extra value to national economies."

The index will be produced by travel-retail market analyst Generation and will be supervised by ETRC vice-president (and Airport Authority of Turin and Florence commercial development director) Fulvio Fassone.

RavenFox.com understands that the Council discussed the project with French trade association Association Francaise du Commerce du Voyageur, which launched its index of the national trade in early 2004.