Tourvest anticipates $2m annual sales from Bellview

Gavin Lipsith

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The South African inflight retailer has signed a three-year deal to run retail on board the ambitious west African airline

Tourvest Duty Free has concluded three months of negotiations with Nigeria-based Bellview Airlines by signing a three-year inflight retail contract that it believes will be worth $2m in annual sales. Tourvest CEO Ian Hay told RavenFox.com that the contract offers an exciting opportunity on the region's pre-eminent airline following the demise of Nigeria Airways.

Bellview offers two long-haul services from Lagos—direct to London Heathrow airport and via Dubai to Mumbai—although Hay said that the core of its business is a "hop-on, hop-off" service flying from Lagos to several west African capital cities. Tourvest will open a new office in Lagos to oversee the business.

Hay said that the company had covered the intricacies of stocking the city-hopper service in its discussions with the airlines, and said that Tourvest would have to think of innovative solutions to its product assortment in order to accommodate the challenge.

"Bellview doesn't offer duty-free at the moment," said Hay. "They tried it in house three or four years ago but it didn't work out for them. It is a nice opportunity for us on board an entrepreneurial airline. The contract starts officially on February 1, but ideally we would like to be selling before that although it will be difficult with Christmas in the middle."

Meanwhile Tourvest has renewed its three-year retail contract with Air Namibia. Hay said that the company would be looking to make changes to its product offer. "Traditionally we have cloned the South African Airlines' brochure, which was cost expedient but was not optimal for the needs of the passengers. For example on routes from Frankfurt the main passenger group is French tourists heading to Namibia for their holidays. They might not find everything they want in the current brochure, so we will be looking to update the range on offer."