Bologna Airport: In pole position for the future of airport retail

Retail is a key element in Bologna Airport commercial strategy: not only is it a fundamental source of revenues, but also it represents an important touch point in the passenger’s journey, influencing the general perception of the airport and providing the first and the last occasion to come in touch with something peculiar from our territory.

In order to reach this goal BLQ, during the last 20 years, has worked with local premium brands and food and beverage (F&B) operators along with global retailers to achieve a retail offer which includes a high percentage of local products and local formats that accompany the most renowned Italian and international products.

Bologna Airport is located in the centre-north of Italy in a strategic spot that grants to BLQ a high connectivity with important cities such as Milan and Florence, which can be reached respectively in one hour and slightly more than half an hour. The BLQ catchment area includes 11 million inhabitants and around 47,000 companies with a strong propensity to export and internationalisation and with commercial expansion policies to Eastern Europe and Asia. Automotive, food, tiles, fashion, automatic machines and tourism are only few among the main economic sectors which makes catchment area extremely active and puts our region among the Italian areas with the higher GDP per capita. These elements pushed the post-COVID recovery and in 2023 Bologna Airport has reached almost 10 million passengers with a growth of 17.4% versus 2022 and a growth of 6% versus 2019, the first semester of 2024 strengthened this growth.

Several infrastructural projects are currently ongoing, and we expect that the completion will bring an important improvement in the level of satisfaction of our passengers. Among these projects the redesign of the airside Schengen boarding area is going to bring new commercial spaces and flows optimisation.

The commercial offer at Bologna Airport is made up by around 4,500 sqm with a greater percentage of F&B category which makes around the 43% of total commercial space. Duty Free represents the 22% with two shops located in both the boarding areas and retail represents the 35%.

Bringing a local flavour

We strongly believe that airports shall be unique in terms of commercial offer since this unicity represents a critical success factor that pushes sales and customer experience. For this reason, we strived to pursue a retail mix that includes renowned local brands along with top international airport brands in F&B and Duty-Free sectors.

Food represents undoubtedly a peculiarity of Bologna along with its colours and gothic architectonic forms that can be found in the medieval downtown. In order to provide a unique experience, we wanted to re-create the atmosphere of local old-style shops, then in partner with local small brands we developed an airport retail concept that could embrace these atmospheres. In 2004 we opened the first format, several followed.

Not only traditional food represents a backbone of our commercial offer but also sport cars and bikes are important touchpoints in our passenger journey. Bologna Airport is located at the heart of the so-called Motor Valley and we pushed important automotive brands such as Lamborghini, Ferrari and Ducati, creating shops and touchpoints inside BLQ airport in order to capture passenger’s attention.

During the years we have built an important partnership with Lamborghini which includes a showroom located at the main entrance/exit of BLQ Airport, where passenger journey begins and ends. We impress our passengers also by using a supercar as a “follow me” car, and a Lamborghini Urus to bring our VIP passengers to the aircraft.

Regionality and local excellences represent also an important part of the assortment in shops and Duty Free which is operated by Heinemann: local products (food, wines, perfumes and cosmetics) represent an important part of the assortment that complements a wider international offer.

Sustainability strategy

In the aftermath of COVID, BLQ embraced the choice to include sustainability among the pillars of its own strategy and then we started developing initiatives aimed at bringing sustainability among our commercial partners. Immediately we recognised the great opportunity and importance of a concreate collaboration with retailers. Airport retailers are fundamental touchpoints in the customer journey, bringing sustainability principles into outlets and into daily F&B operations helps passengers understanding the general sensitivity that airport gives to sustainability. This is of particular importance in the process of approaching younger passengers and future generations: the early surveys conducted among Gen Alphas highlight that this category of passenger gives a much higher importance toward sustainability than their predecessors and their willingness to buy will probably be guided by sustainability principles.

We started a constructive dialogue with our F&B, retail and Duty-Free partners on several environmental initiatives.

The first issue we decided to tackle was waste sorting. Most airports have levels of waste sorting well below the urban areas where they are located and this is due to several reasons, being the complexity of airport operations and the anxiety of passengers in airport terminals the main reasons.

We started by providing specific training to F&B personnel, we helped operators redesign outlets in order to make waste sorting easier, we improved and provided support to logistics activities and we fixed targets and shared data in monthly meetings with F&B managers. In less than one year we passed from a 20% of waste sorting to around the 50%.

Along with these initiatives we developed other actions aimed at increasing the level of circularity in the waste produced at BLQ. Through a specific initiative that BLQ has developed with some partners, the cooking oil, that is normally disposed at the expense of the concessionaire, is now recovered and transformed in bio-fuel at no expanse for concessionaires.

We also push concessionaires to develop concepts with furniture produced with re-used materials, such as plastic, coffee and oranges and since 2019 we included sustainability criteria in the tender process.

More recently we partnered with Plastic Free, a non-profit organisation which promotes the culture of plastic prevention and raises awareness on the effect of plastic pollution. Together we developed a pivotal project aimed at reducing the use of plastic in F&B outlets and the re-use of plastic in specific processes. Under this project we pushed F&B to reduce single-use plastic and three F&B outlets have phased out plastic in B2C processes, others concessionaires have implemented initiatives to reducing plastic usage.

We continue to strengthen the collaboration with local brands and several other sustainability initiatives are ongoing to make our airport more sustainable every day and in line with our customers’ future needs.