The once-soaring channel is grappling with how best to handle a new reality: Foot traffic is up, but spend is down.

CANNES, France — The travel retail industry is grappling with major conundrums.

Topping the list is that although traveler footfall, which reached an estimated 9.8 billion passengers in 2025, has surpassed levels seen before the pandemic in 2019, individual passenger spend remains down.

“Income from activities such as food, beverage and car parking has continued to grow, but retail revenue per passenger has fallen more than 20 percent since pre-COVID,” said Sarah Branquinho, the new president of TFWA World Exhibition & Conference whose Cannes edition took place from Sept. 27 to Oct. 1, speaking during the show’s opening conference.

She explained this is due to a host of reasons, including changing passenger behaviors, shifting space allocation and digital distraction. Travel retail is no longer a price-value proposition that competes just with the high street, but also with platforms such as Amazon, Rakuten and Tmall around the globe.

“Our opportunity is not simply to welcome more passengers,” Branquinho said. “It’s to give more of those passengers a compelling reason to shop.”

She believes travel retail stands at a defining moment to reinvent and transform, but that shaping its future is about more than adapting to change — it is about giving direction, creating experiences that are more connected, sustainable and human.

That’s all needed to engage — and convert — younger consumers, who are the burgeoning demographic expected to account for about 50 percent to 60 percent of travelers by 2035.

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