Airport retail key to future of aviation industry
ACI EUROPE 6 square de Meeûs 1000 Brussels, Belgium www.aci-europe.org
For immediate release
10 March 2005
Zurich, 10 March 2005: More and more European airports are using their non-aeronautical revenues (commercial income) to help build the airport infrastructure that can meet the increasing demand for air travel. This issue was addressed this morning at the 14th ACI EUROPE Trading Conference and Exhibition taking place at the Maag Event Hall, Zurich. Hosted by Unique (Flughafen Zürich AG), this two-day event welcomes over 500 senior level executives to debate ways to improve airport retail, the low-cost explosion and the relationship with commercial partners. Roy Griffins, Director General, ACI EUROPE: “With passenger traffic set to double in Europe by 2020, European airports look set to become the major bottleneck in the air transport chain beyond 2005. To address the ‘capacity crunch’, airports are investing over €80 billion in new infrastructure over the next few years. This massive investment in aviation services will be built upon airports’ commercial retail revenues. We must get the airport/retail/suppliers partnership right if we are going to be able to build for the future. Today’s event helps facilitate this debate and improve the retail experience at Europe’s airports.” Josef Felder, CEO and President, Unique (Flughafen Zürich AG): “Today, airlines react much quicker to market trends and pick up or cut new connections almost on a daily bases. An increase in revenues generated from retail earnings per square meter of commercial infrastructure is therefore not only important to maximize overall earnings but to help the airport become less vulnerable to volatile aviation markets as well as the dominance of a main customer such as a home carrier.” ARBi, the Airport Retail Benchmarking Initiative, was also launched at the conference enabling airports and concessionaires to see how to improve performance. The event includes cutting edge presentations from Erik JuulMortensen, President, TFWA; Jan Skeels, Secretary General, ELFAA; Carlo Bernasconi, CEO Region Europe, Nuance; Mark Riches, Managing Director of World Duty Free, BAA; Silke Horemans, Director of Retail, Köln Bonn Airport; Paul Kehoe, Executive Director, TBI and Managing Director, London Luton Airport; George Horan, Deputy Managing Director, Dubai International Airport and many more. ENDS
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For media relations on-site, please contact Ronan Anderson, Communications Manager, ACI EUROPE, via e-mail: ronan.anderson@acieurope.org, mobile: +32 (0)486 54 14 71 or tel: +32 (0)2 552 09 82. Airports Council International (ACI) is the only worldwide professional association of airport operators. ACI EUROPE represents over 450 airports in 45 European countries. Member airports handle 90% of commercial air traffic in Europe, welcoming over a billion passengers each year.