Avolta Grows Retail Footprint As Per-Head Spending Lags Traffic Growth

A presentation from the world’s biggest travel retailer, Avolta, has highlighted a negative trend in the global travel retail market: growth in spend per passenger (SPP) is not keeping up with the number of travelers taking to the skies—with duty-free store owners and their airport landlords still not doing enough to reverse the trend.

Avolta—whose revenue hit 13.5 billion Swiss francs ($15.3 billion), up by 6.4% last year—held a Capital Markets Day on Thursday in Barcelona for the first time in three years. The company, whose brands include Autogrill, HMSHost, and Hudson, shared that while like-for-like growth between 2023 and 2025 was 4-5%, SPP only rose by 2-3%. Particularly hard hit have been product categories such as alcohol and watches/jewelry, both currently in negative territory.

From 2022, a Covid-19 bounce-back year when SPP jumped by 17%, it fell to 5% in 2023, and 3.2% last year. The first quarter of 2025 was stable, but not great, at 3%. This compares to airline association IATA data showing passenger growth rates over those same three years as 64%, 37%, and 10% respectively, where 2024 was 3.8% above pre-pandemic levels for the first time. Airports are where Avolta derives more than 80% of its revenue.

Key nationalities impacting global SPP

Part of the negative impact of lower SPP growth has come from fewer high-spending Russian and Chinese passengers traveling globally due to sanctions and post-Covid caution, respectively. Duty-free retailers reliant on these nationalities have seen their SPPs decreasing,

Importantly, about one-third (34.4% currently) of Avolta’s like-for-like growth comes from SPP, and two-thirds from passenger growth. It therefore makes more sense to expand into new travel locations which is exactly what has been happening in recent years: for example, in the United States at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and elsewhere.

At the presentation, Xavier Rossinyol, CEO of Avolta, said: “We are at the mid-point of the strategic plan, Destination 2027, that we presented to the equity markets in September 2022. We are convinced that a high level of geographical diversification is key to the resilience of the group. We are growing with new concessions and new countries in every one of our four regions.”

Between 2022 and 2024, Avolta also secured contract renewals at a high rate of 95%. Airport landlords’ concerns are not necessarily the same as retailers but Avolta’s scale and data sharing approach is yielding results in the way it has managed to retain business with relative ease. Airport operators are also hyper-focused on their customer experience ratings, and retail is one of the most visible and tangible aspects of this for a passenger.

Avolta makes headway in Denmark

The latest win for Avolta has been in Denmark, where it has just been awarded a five-year food and beverage (F&B) contract in Copenhagen Airport’s Terminal 3 expansion covering five new units. The retailer has been at the airport—which processed 30 million passengers last year, still marginally below 2019—for nearly 20 years and currently operates five units including Copenhagen Coffee Lab, Neighbourhood Pizza, and Burger King.

Switzerland-based Avolta is an industry bellwether. By revenue, the company was almost double the size of its nearest rival last year and it is also one of just two (the other being Lagardère Travel Retail (LTR), which is now in a leadership transition phase), that operates across the main travel spheres: airport, trains, cruises/ports, downtown, and highways. The company left out borders, also a key channel, in its assessment.

The next nearest travel retailer is China’s CTG Duty Free Group which has seen declining revenue in recent years. In 2024, sales fell to 56.5 billion Chinese Yuan, or about $7.9 billion in 2024 (based on last year’s average FX rate). France’s LTR ranks third at $6.1 billion, but grew faster than its Swiss rival last year.

Avolta has managed to strengthen its balance sheet and cut costs to build better foundations for its future. Yves Gerster, CFO of Avolta, noted: “Avolta has a compelling equity story that combines resilience, growth, and long-term value creation.” However, as before Covid, the company is likely over-reliant on growth in global passenger traffic—another pandemic would be devastating for it and a still fragmented global industry.

The Role of Data and Loyalty in Driving SPP

Spend per passenger, despite being another big growth driver, seems less of a priority versus new locations—something every big travel retailer is also looking at—despite the brag from Avolta that SPP “is increasing thanks to the company’s sharpened commercial focus.” But when it is growing at only half the rate of traffic growth this is not a win, even if competitors may not be doing as well.

Naturally, the drive to add more market share is enticing, and Rossinyol is lured by a huge untapped traveler market and the buoyant future forecasts for passengers. For example, airports association ACI says numbers will exceed 12 billion in 2030, up from 9.5 billion last year.

To his credit, Rossinyol is now heavily pushing the data side of the business and has revamped the loyalty scheme Club Avolta for this purpose and to drive SPP. As the largest duty-free retailer “we have the possibility to access more data than anybody in the industry.” He added: “Are we doing everything we should be doing? No,” he admitted. “We are still at an early stage… but we are much better placed today than three years ago.”

With Gen Y and Gen Z accounting for more than 60% of travelers, comparing prices is very much the norm because a good price still remains a top priority for them, and other travelers, at airports according to Avolta’s data. So SPP will continue to fall if duty-free operators don’t address this and/or can’t meaningfully engage with them on other levels such as local sourcing, product heritage and authenticity, as well as value.

At the meeting, Avolta reaffirmed its medium-term outlook of organic growth at between 5% and 7%, with core Ebitda margin improvements of 20-40bps.

More stories and information about Avolta can be found by following this link.