Air traffic and overall sales continue to grow, but spend per traveler is declining. At the same time, consumer behavior is changing as new commerce platforms influence how people discover brands and buy products. The conversation considers the growing importance of Gen Z, as well as the expectations Gen Alpha and Gen Beta could bring to travel retail over the next 15 to 20 years.

In Chapter 2 of The Great GTR Reckoning, Thomas Kaneko Henningsen, Partner at Blueprint, and Ibrahim Ibrahim, Managing Director of Portland Design, examine the link between dwell time and commercial opportunity through the aerotropolis concept, where the airport becomes part of the destination.

What if getting to the airport early was something you genuinely looked forward to? What if you could get a few productive hours in before your flight, fit in a workout, enjoy a good meal or catch an event? And could some of those same experiences give residents a reason to come to the airport even when they aren’t flying?

In Chapter 3 of The Great GTR Reckoning, Thomas Kaneko Henningsen, Partner at Blueprint, and Ibrahim Ibrahim, Managing Director of Portland Design, examine how airports could rethink their retail space over the next 25 years.

In Chapter 4 of The Great GTR Reckoning, Thomas Kaneko Henningsen, Partner at Blueprint, and Ibrahim Ibrahim, Managing Director of Portland Design, explore how changing consumer behaviors are influencing the future of airport food and beverage.

The conversation covers a range of trends, from health and wellness and personalization to visually driven food trends and the growing crossover between dining, retail and lifestyle. They also examine how luxury and lifestyle brands are moving into F&B to create social experiences, how AI and personal health data could enable more personalized airport dining, and the commercial potential of experiential F&B.

Travel retail consultancy Blueprint is marking its tenth anniversary, setting out its vision for the next two years alongside a review of progress over the past years.

Blueprint Partner Thomas Kaneko Henningsen, who founded the consultancy in 2016, said: “Ten years ago, Blueprint was founded on a simple promise: to have fun doing what we truly believe in. It means everything to us that we enjoy what we do. It must be heartfelt.”

Blueprint Partner Karl Walter added: “Today, we sit at the intersection where purpose meets experience; equal parts consultancy, advisory and think tank. This gives us a bandwidth that enables us to customise solutions to a wider range of industry stakeholders.”

There’s no easy way to predict the future of travel retail, but forecasting remains an essential tool for building resilience in a rapidly changing world. We asked thought leaders on the topic to share their perspectives on how the sector is likely to evolve as we enter the next decade. 

Travel retail research agency m1nd-set and consultancy partners Blueprint are gearing up for their Sensation Zeduction immersive masterclass, which is taking place from 13:30-17:00 on Sunday 27 September at Hotel Barrière Le Majestic Cannes to coincide with the TFWA World Exhibition & Conference.

OVER TO YOU – LIVE: The behaviour of travelling shoppers is changing faster than the industry serving them and keeping pace requires industry-wide transformation, according to Blueprint Partner Thomas Kaneko Henningsen.

Travel retail consultancy Blueprint, in collaboration with TravConsult, has released a new study into the rise of food and beverage in travel retail, highlighting the role of coffee in solving what it considers an industry challenge.

“Coffee is a multi-dimensional experience platform with transformative powers: it comes in different sizes, tastings, price levels and benefits from global recognition and cultural heritage. It excels at emotional context,” says Blueprint Partner Thomas Kaneko Henningsen.

“We can learn so much from the same bean that offers affordable brew for the many and high-priced emotional experience for the few – it is fascinating!”

In this contributed feature, Blueprint Partners Thomas Kaneko Henningsen and Sonja Soskic reflect on why Sense of Belonging brings a new, emotional dimension to understanding travelling consumer behaviour.

“The future of airport experience will not only be measured by efficiency but by how people feel offline and online; it is multi-dimensional and really tricky to implement.” So says Blueprint Partner Thomas Kaneko Henningsen as he reflects on how travellers are choosing experiences that “create connection, not just convenience”.

For decades, he notes, the travel retail community has invested heavily in creating a strong sense of place; celebrating local culture, architecture, gastronomy and heritage to immerse travellers in the identity of a destination.

Ahead of the Day 2 closing keynote, the focus of the TR Consumer Forum was fixed on the future shape of the travel retail industry in a session titled Inconvenient Predictions: Tomorrow’s Airport Shoppers Will Not Wait. 

Blueprint Partner, Thomas Henningsen, ever passionate about the industry, launched his session by providing an in-depth perspective on the shifting behaviour of the travel retail customer. He paired that opportunity with a warning that the industry is not keeping pace with change and needs to accelerate to stay relevant to customers, their needs, and their lifestyles.

In a heartfelt presentation, Henningsen said that travel retail is not merely facing a period of change; it is undergoing a profound, structural transformation. While the current business model has proved resilient for decades (and perhaps a hint that some in the industry have simply stayed on the simplest path), he warned that travel retail is now confronting a “perfect storm” of six simultaneous megatrends (AI, Gen Z, Experiential, Conscious Consumerism, Social Commerce, and Geopolitics) that threaten to render traditional strategies obsolete.

The central opening question posed to the audience was stark: “Are we ready for the next 25 years?” He answered his own question with the emphatic comment, “I can tell you the short answer is ‘No’. We are not ready.”

European airports are entering a structurally different era. For decades, financial viability was underpinned by dynamic traffic growth. But as ACI EUROPE’s latest analysis makes clear, that assumption can no longer be taken for granted. In a lower-growth, higher-cost, and ultimately more volatile environment, the question is no longer simply how many passengers pass through a terminal – but how much value each passenger represents.

Within this context, airport lounges are emerging as areas of the terminal with incredibly rich potential. The ACI EUROPE Task Force on Airport Lounges, a subgroup of the ACI EUROPE Commercial Forum, is tasked with exploring this potential in further detail. In this Five Minute Feature, we ask the co-Rapporteurs of the ACI EUROPE Task Force on Airport Lounges – Thomas Kaneko Henningsen (Partner, Blueprint) and Lasse Berg (Director, Newmark’s Travel and Aviation Division) – on the Task Force’s rich insights into the power of airport lounges and their strategic importance moving forward.

A new survey suggests travelers are becoming more value‑conscious in airport shops—unsurprising given the spiraling cost of air travel last year, with further increases likely as the geopolitical situation in the Middle East pushes costs higher. With travel budgets squeezed, passengers have less to spend in the terminals.

France-based Duty Free World Council (DFWC)—the global voice for the duty- and tax-free industry—cites value and convenience as becoming more important to travelers in 2025. DFWC’s full-year Global Shopping Monitor found that ‘good value for money’ was the main driver for 27% of shoppers, up from 25% in 2024. And convenience and the desire to self-treat also saw year-on-year gains, rising to 21% and 18% respectively.

As these factors grow in importance, stakeholders in the airport shopping sector have not done enough to give consumers more confidence around value. The DFWC monitor said the channel “continues to face challenges around price perception which remains a barrier to purchase.”

Airport retail remains largely analogue in a digitally accelerated world. It has historically relied on a simple yet highly successful formula: traffic × dwell time × impulse × duty-free pricing. In other words; sell cheaper, sell more, sell faster.

According to the Copenhagen-based travel retail consultancy Blueprint, that formula which has been relevant for decades no longer guarantees conversion and spend as airports increasingly welcome Gen Z. These younger mobile-first shoppers are forecasted to become the biggest traveler profile by 2028 and their appetite for AI-powered shopping is accelerating. This customer profile isn’t just an enigma that airports struggle to crack, they are a preview of what is happening: the transformation of airport shopping.

“Airport shopping has shifted permanently; this is a wake-up call” says Blueprint Partner Thomas Kaneko Henningsen following the consultancy’s attendance at the recent Trinity Forum in Doha.

“This shift is increasingly fueled by the transformative rise in Gen Z shoppers and AI-powered technologies. It should send shivers down our spines because when these two megatrends intertwine it requires a new travel retail playbook.”

Airport retail remains largely analogue in a digitally accelerated world. It has historically relied on a simple yet highly successful formula: traffic × dwell time × impulse × duty-free pricing. In other words; sell cheaper, sell more, sell faster.

According to the Copenhagen-based travel retail consultancy Blueprint, that formula which has been relevant for decades no longer guarantees conversion and spend as airports increasingly welcome Gen Z. These younger mobile-first shoppers are forecasted to become the biggest traveler profile by 2028 and their appetite for AI-powered shopping is accelerating. This customer profile isn’t just an enigma that airports struggle to crack, they are a preview of what is happening: the transformation of airport shopping.

Blueprint is closing 2025 on a high note. The Copenhagen-based travel retail consultancy has delivered another year of growth focusing on helping airports, retailers and brands rethink what comes next.

Thomas Kaneko Henningsen, Blueprint Partner, said, “I do not recall experiencing this degree of unpredictability, instability and rapid change on a global scale during my 25 years in this industry. We are at a critical crossroad where the old travel retail playbook is being phased out and replaced by a new one shaped by younger lifestyle travelers, AI (artificial intelligence) technology, experiential retail, social commerce and highly volatile geopolitics.”

Copenhagen-based consultancy Blueprint is deepening its efforts to bring the duty free and travel retail (DF&TR) industry actionable insights on appealing to Gen Z shoppers, by assembling a panel of consultants from the generation to advise on projects for clients.

“At Blueprint, we believe the best way to anticipate younger shoppers’ impact on travel retail is to invite them into the strategy room,” said Blueprint Partners Sonja Soskic, Karl Walter and Thomas Kaneko-Henningsen.

“Welcoming the next generation of thinkers is a dynamic way to future-proof our work by unlocking raw insight, cultural fluency and mobile-first instincts that challenge old assumptions and shape new perspectives. It is a breath of fresh air.”

The move underscores the influence of Gen Z and how they are expected to make their mark on the travel retail industry in the coming years.

According to m1nd-set research, there are 2.5 billion Gen Z globally – that’s 32% of the population.

Furthermore, Gen Z is expected to account for 1.2 billion  global passengers flying in 2028, when they are on track to outnumber millennials as the largest global airline passenger group.

Business development consultancy Blueprint has become a shareholder in Indivd, a Stockholm-based artificial intelligence (AI) technology company pioneering privacy-first analytics.

The partnership signals a key step forward in Blueprint’s vision of how AI will reshape the airport shopping journey, evolving it from transactional retail into predictable, hyper-personalised and memorable traveller experiences.

“By uniting Blueprint’s strategic foresight with Indivd’s patented and GDPR-compliant AI technology, we have implemented a powerful capability; tracking and predicting shopping behaviour and turning findings into actionable recommendations for airports, retailers and brands,” commented Blueprint partner Karl Walter.

“The best part is that this set-up is easy-to-use, cheap to run and comes with the highest degree of accuracy.”