Duty free celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2017, and to mark that milestone TFWA launched a promotional campaign aimed at international passengers.

duty freeThe objectives were to raise awareness of a near-US$70 billion industry born in a small shop at Shannon Airport in post-war Ireland, and to highlight the contribution duty free and travel retail makes to travel, tourism and the passenger experience. Six eye-catching visuals carried a series of messages, from the importance of gifting to the jobs and investment in transport financed by industry revenues, all bearing the tagline “Duty Free and Travel Retail: Part of the Journey”.

dehliTFWA made the campaign available free of charge to companies in the travel arena, encouraging them to add their logo and display the visuals in advertising space or marketing content (printed and online) to which they had access. Take-up among landlords, operators, airlines and trade bodies has been enthusiastic and geographically widespread, the campaign executions appearing at airports and in promotional publications across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas and Asia-Pacific, as well as on social media. As duty free and travel retail’s largest region by sales, Asia Pacific figured prominently with campaign visuals at major airports like Korea’s Seoul Incheon, Tokyo Narita and Haneda in Japan and Singapore Changi. Delhi Duty Free and Dubai Duty Free were among the travel retailers to showcase the campaign in-store, as were Dufry at London Heathrow. It seems particularly apt that Shannon Airport, the industry’s birthplace back in 1947, also chose to join in the celebrations.

TFWA would like to thank all those who participated in the campaign and made it possible. We are proud of the contribution our industry has made to the travel experience over the past 70 years and hope we are still around to celebrate the centenary in 2047.

UK anniversary campaign