Sharing airport retail revenues ?

http://www.anna.aero/2013/04/24/the-next-opportunity-to-attract-airlines-collaborating-to-enhance-airport-retail-revenues/

Extract :

Hungry airports are bending over backwards to find (legal) means to attract airlines with minimal charges, shared marketing costs, and PSO deals etc. But airlines on the polar-opposite of the spectrum, including Lufthansa and Ryanair, seem to agree that airports are missing a real possibility: To cooperate with airports to build and share airport retail revenues.

It’s a simple principle: Airlines possess 100% of the data on flyers – email, gender, what credit card they use and, crucially, which two airports they will be visiting on any given trip.
In contrast, airports only know who is flying in far more general terms – unless the traveller has pre-booked parking – a rapidly increasing trend, but still a far less precise method of data capture than the comprehensive detail possessed by airlines.

As the airlines have the data, and the airports have the great shops, it does not take a genius to work out that both parties separately possess all the tools they need to work together to promote offers.

Of course it’s only right for airports to be terrified of airlines like Ryanair finding yet another new way of squeezing money out of them. As O’Toole points out – “airport retail is vital precisely because airport charges paid by airlines are already well below the cost of the infrastructure they use.”

But, clearly it makes sense to at least explore moving beyond the zero cooperation between airports and airlines to see if they can create BRAND NEW retail revenue streams. “We have 180 airports in the network and countless others knocking on the door to get a Ryanair route – yet in two years I have had only three vague approaches to consider commercial cooperation,” said Ryanair’s ancillary revenue boss Walsh, who thinks he has a lot to offer from 80 million real customers and 290 million unique visits to the Ryanair website. “Do we have a plan? No. Do I have an interest? Yes.”

World Duty Free’s Fred Creighton could not see a roadmap to progress until one giant roadblock is cleared – the ‘one-bag rule’ which has caused very specific damage to retail, and much resentment among passengers who have been stripped of their liquor and chocolate, or forced to pay for an extra bag at more than face value of the purchase.