What: Travel retail is experiencing strong momentum.

Why it is important: Lagardère Travel Retail (Aelia, Relay, Buy Paris, Duty-Free) saw revenues jump by 77% as tourists began travelling again.

This excludes tourism from China. Revenue soared in non-Asian zones, but the growth remained limited to +6.1% in Asia.

The company generated sales of 2.8 billion euros in the nine-month period against 2 billion euros at Lagardère Publishing, extending the airport retailer’s share of total company revenue and providing more certainty that the airport business has found its feet again.

In France, where Lagardère Travel Retail also has railway station stores, revenue grew by 63% as air and rail traffic rebounded, with both domestic and intra-European journeys increasing. The Americas had slower sales momentum of 33% driven by domestic travel in the United States and a long-awaited recovery in Canada.

This lift means that travel retail is again the star of the show after huge declines during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Travel retail is back after the pandemic hit hard