Kenya Airways leads pack for Tourvest

Tina Milton

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A tourism revival in East Africa has fuelled strong growth for the Tourvest Duty Free inflight concession on board Kenya Airways

Tourvest Duty Free has reported double-digit dollar sales growth across all its airline concessions year on year. The top performer Kenya Airways has enjoyed a rise in sales of more than 40%.

Tourvest CEO Ian Hay told RavenFox.com that the airlines had benefited from East Africa's revival as a tourist destination. "Kenya Airways has experienced organic growth and added a number of new routes to Istanbul and Shanghai as well as into Africa," he explained.

Fragrances is the best-selling category on board the carrier, although product range Proudly Kenya featuring ethnic jewellery and local items, has been "extremely well received".

Tourvest also resigned its contract with Virgin Atlantic Airways a couple of months ago but will manage its inflight operations until November 2006. Its three-year contract with the Nigeria-based carrier Bellview Airlines will begin in February.

"There is a high propensity to spend in West Africa and we will showcase a conventional mix of products to suit the carrier's hop-on, hop-off service," said Hay. "We will offer a smaller range of brands but the stock for these lines will be bigger."

The retailer also has a three-year concession contract with Air Namibia and manages inflight retail for Interair. It also owns the retail rights for South African Airways' onboard business, which it holds for a further 14 years.

More details on South Africa will appear in DFNI Dec 1.