IAADFS joins duty free recovery insights service

The International Association of Airport and Duty Free Stores (IAADFS) has joined a complimentary service that offers traffic analysis and shopper insights in global travel retail.

IAADFS has subscribed to the Business 1ntelligence Service (B1S) Recovery Monitor, a complimentary service for all trade associations provided by Swiss research agency M1nd-Set.

Data is collected within M1nd-Set’s traffic analysis and forecast tool, B1S, which combines the data with shopper insights to give a ‘holistic’ overview of current behaviour, and forecast behaviour, by region, country and airport.

The quarterly report gives associations a summary of the key traffic trends and shopper trends for the top nationalities travelling through their respective regions.

Michael Payne, IAADFS president and CEO, said: “Access to key traffic trends and behaviour information is going to be vital to all our members.

“To have this data provided through this partnership on a complimentary basis from M1nd-set, for Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, is very valuable to our members and highly appreciated.”

The first quarter report covered North and Central America, and the Caribbean. It showed international departures from North America plummeted by more than 74.9% between 2019 and 2020, falling from 165 million to 41m in 2020.

In Central America and the Caribbean, traffic fell 68% from 116m to 37m passengers.

However, the report said recovery would be ‘consistently robust’ across the regions. International departures in North America are forecast to grow by 63% in 2021 and 61% in 2022.

In Central America and the Caribbean, international departures are expected to rise by 58% in 2021 and by 57% in 2022.

Pre-Covid-19 levels are expected to be reached in Central America and the Caribbean by 2023, but it is forecast that 2023 international departures from North America will still be 20m short of the 165m departures recorded in 2019.