Heathrow offers “personal shopper” service, to ensure rich passengers are helped to spend
For Heathrow, getting passengers to shop at the airport is vital. The airport is said to have made something like £480 million from retail in 2013, with passengers spending around £1.8 billion in total. Passengers spend on average about £38 each in the airport. And some passengers spend a very great deal. Heathrow has a Personal Shopper service “which offers travellers an accredited stylist with free of charge service and provide them an individually tailored retail style.” For those too dim, impressionable or incapable of locating what to splash their cash on, and how to find the most pretentious and expensive designer brands, they can book their own shopper who will tell them what to buy. This truly is hyper-consumerism gone mad. Some quotes: “Everyday, there will be personal shoppers who are fluent in Arabic, French, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish that will provide free of charge services to all passengers”….Supermodel Erin O’Connor said: “Travel has been and still is a huge part of my life. The Personal Shoppers at Heathrow have incredible fashion and beauty insight which means they can pull a selection for me before I even arrive at the airport. I can make the most of my time before I board my flight and know that I will have everything I want for my trip.” And it offers free beauty treatments.
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Personal Shopper service at Heathrow airport
9. Oct, 2013
by janice (Heathrow Airport’s website)
London Heathrow airport has opened its new Personal Shopper service which offers travellers an accredited stylist with free of charge service and provide them an individually tailored retail style.
The airport described it as a ‘first’ for an international airport. It also believes that the new service would draw together about 300 outlets at the airport with a consultation that can be reserved in advance or can avail on the arrival at the airport.
Muriel Zingraff-Shariff, Heathrow Retail Director, said: “The launch of Heathrow’s Personal Shopper service is a world first, and one that we’re immensely proud of. We’re always looking to introduce new services which will benefit our passengers and help them make the most of the time.
“Whether you’re flying for business or leisure our Personal Shoppers can help you treat yourself or find the perfect gift for a loved one.”
Everyday, there will be personal shoppers who are fluent in Arabic, French, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish that will provide free of charge services to all passengers.
Supermodel Erin O’Connor who co-hosted the event at Somerset House in London said: “Travel has been and still is a huge part of my life. The Personal Shoppers at Heathrow have incredible fashion and beauty insight which means they can pull a selection for me before I even arrive at the airport.
“I can make the most of my time before I board my flight and know that I will have everything I want for my trip.”
The new Personal Shopper service is one of the newest services in Heathrow. It is endorsed by home delivery, online product reservation, free beauty treatments and Shop and Collect.
http://londonheathrow.co/home/personal-shopper-new-service-heathrow-airport/
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Personal Shoppers
Heathrow is delighted to offer you complimentary stylist-trained shopping assistance. Our team members have international knowledge and can offer assistance in many different languages. If time allows, they may be able to take you to a different terminal to visit a particular store. Heathrow Personal Shoppers are available by appointment only. Please request an appointment 48 hours before you travel with our booking form. Whether you want to update your seasonal wardrobe or purchase a gift for someone special, our team will be pleased to assist.
Book Heathrow’s complimentary personal shopping service
Heathrow offers complimentary Personal Shopping for customers looking for that personal touch. Bringing together all of the stores at the airport, you can book a bespoke consultation with an accredited stylist.
You can make an appointment with a Personal Shopper, day or night, they speak a wide range of languages and can help you with fashion advice and styling, gift ideas for that special someone, or choosing the perfect travel accessories.
Our Personal Shopper Team are proud to present the world’s first airport shopping lounge in Terminal 2, where we can assist with browsing, trying on and purchasing from your choices, from our range of stores, in the privacy and comfort of our brand new suite.
Plus, enter your Heathrow Rewards card number when you book to receive triple points on all purchases made during your appointment.
BOOK
Contact us to request an appointment:
BRIEF
We will contact you to discuss what you are looking for, your budget and the time you have available.
MEET
Your Personal Shopper will arrange where to meet you after security. You will have their contact details, in case you are delayed.
SHOP
Based on your brief, your Personal Shopper will have prepared a shopping plan to make the most of your time.
Details at http://boutique.heathrow.com/index.php/personal-shopper
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Sales are taking off at Heathrow Airport and Terminal 2 has become ‘retail heaven’, say bosses
We may think of Heathrow as an airport, but in some ways it is more of a shopping centre.
Last year, Britain’s hub airport took in £1.5billion in ‘aeronautical income’, such as the charges levied on airlines.
In the same year, passengers spent £1.8billion on retail, splashing out on everything from travel Scrabble to a nerve-steadying glass of champagne. But Heathrow does not get most of that money.
Sales soar: The new Queen’s Terminal (the redeveloped Terminal 2), which opens its doors on June 4, will put retail at the heart of the flying experience
The likes of Dixons and Boots do not pay rent to have a branch at Britain’s airport, they share profits.
Heathrow’s retail revenue came to £487million last year, a hefty chunk of overall group revenue of £2.5billion, most of it coming from such profit-sharing agreements.
The new Queen’s Terminal (the redeveloped Terminal 2), which opens its doors on June 4, will put retail at the heart of the flying experience.
The scramble to get held of floorspace in Terminal 2 has been fierce. Heathrow received an average of five bids for every pitch, with the ratio rising to 22:1 in some of the spaces reserved for fashion outlets.
One requirement for winning that sought-after floorspace was that retailers do something a bit different than they would on the High Street.
Japanese food chain Yo Sushi, for instance, came up with the idea of allowing passengers to make an advance order via Twitter so that the food is ready by the time they have cleared security.
It is an experiment unlikely to survive the first time that a mischievous schoolboy orders 1,000 salmon maki rolls just before jumping on a flight to Lanzarote.
But it is also a commitment to innovation that signals how prestigious it is for retail brands to have a presence at the primary gateway to Britain.
Only the most select retailers have not had to bend over backwards to impress Heathrow.
One is the new Heston Blumenthal restaurant, which will see Heathrow become the only airport in the world to boast two Michelin-starred chefs; there is also a Gordon Ramsay restaurant.
‘We were very keen to get Heston,’ admits John Holland-Kaye, the airport’s development director, who oversaw the terminal’s makeover.
Another is John Lewis, which will open the doors to its first airport shop.
Holland-Kaye says the likes of Heston and John Lewis help show off the things that Britons are proud of.
Rent free: The likes of Dixons and Boots do not pay rent to have a branch at Britain’s airport, they share profits
‘We’re really pleased to have them [John Lewis],’ he says. ‘We want great British brands to use Heathrow to showcase their wares.’
Indeed, some 60 per cent of the 140 brands sold at 400 Heathrow outlets are British. But the retail offer at Heathrow, whose largest shareholder is Spanish constructor Ferrovial, is about much more than patriotism.
With the airport running at full capacity due to the lack of a third runway, the logic of supply and demand dictates that the landing charges levied on airlines – and passed on to passengers in the ticket price – can only rise.
Such charges are capped by the Civil Aviation Authority, but are also kept in check by whatever income the airport can get from elsewhere.
The average retail spend at Heathrow is £38.86 per buyer. And if you are the sort of person who never parts with a penny at the airport, you can take comfort from the fact that every Burberry handbag bought by your fellow passengers is helping to reduce the cost of your ticket.
Finding the perfect balance between luxury brands and essentials is crucial to ensuring maximum retail revenue.
Stuffing a terminal full of Bulgari and Prada, for instance, is not much good when most of the flights are short-haul hops to budget beach destinations. At Terminal 2, the average spend per passenger will be lower than at other terminals, by Heathrow’s own estimates.
But what is most important is that passengers can find what they want, when they want it.
Getting that right is no accident.
Last week, Heathrow welcomed 2,800 volunteers through its doors for a trial to see how smoothly the terminal runs.
Each passenger was given a script giving them an identity to adopt for the day and a task to perform.
The idea is that nothing is left to chance, that the terminal is set up to make life easy for passengers trying to find their flights.
That’s about money as much as it is about logistics.
Not only is it important for Heathrow to monitor whether people can find what they need, but ensuring that things run smoothly is key to maximising retail revenue.
After all, every second spent trying to find your departure gate is a second that could have been spent buying a miniature teddy bear dressed as a Beefeater.