Enhancing the F&B and retail offering at Helsinki Airport

Finavia Helsinki Airport, Credit: Finavia

During the pandemic, you maintained relationships with all your commercial partners – what are your top tips for maintaining relationships during difficult times?

It was a fantastic achievement from the entire team because, of course, it’s always a team effort. But my top tip for maintaining relationships is respect, trust, open communication, honesty and having an open dialogue that tries to find the solutions.

Under your tenure there has been significant improvement in employee satisfaction – what have you done to improve this and what do you think is the key to employee happiness?

Again, just like with your commercial partners, with employees it is about trust and respect, but also growing together. It’s having the mirror in front of yourself as the director or manager and growing and learning while being humble yourself, as well as having fun together. I think that the emotion needs to be there for employees – both for those that have been there for a long time and those just entering the business. It’s really important that you can connect with the company and feel that you’re doing something that is important and meaningful.

Helsinki launched the world’s first airport second-hand shop last year, this is very unusual! What was the reasoning around this and do you have any other innovative store concepts that you can tell us about?

Our passengers have been so excited about our second-hand shop, Relove. I have to give all credit to the entrepreneurs in this case because they have created a concept that has innovated and elevated what we think of second-hand to be something that is fresh, modern and sustainable, but also commercially very viable. This is a hybrid concept which means having a trendy cafe together with sustainable choices and something very fashionable.

I think it’s great that there are entrepreneurs that step up and set the barrier higher and higher. I think we need the big global players in the industry because they are really sales machines, bringing in the volumes and also knowing their customers in that sense. I’m so happy about all of these younger entrepreneurs as more concepts are taking their place and space.

Is there space for them at an airport as big as Helsinki?

Well, I hope that we can bring even more innovation and new things to the airport. We have finalised our 10-year development programme, so we are quite set, but there’s always room to improve.

What trends have you observed in your passengers and the way that they spend their money in the retail stores? How have you pivoted to accommodate these behaviours?

I don’t like thinking of trends as ‘I’m buying yellow clothes or green clothes’. I think that if I’m observing the consumer right now, it’s about choices. Our world is so full of choices. It can be the cheapest product or it can be something that brings happiness, emotion, value and luxury into your life. I would say for Finavia, we are nudging towards making those choices that feel good for the customer.

Helsinki Airport now has nearly 50 restaurants and cafes and has almost doubled since 2019. What do you think this says about your passengers and what trends are you observing in their wants and needs when it comes to food and beverages?

The main thing I would say is that there is less service on the airplanes and people are sceptical about what is served on the plane, especially if you’re not travelling business class. I would say that the trend is takeaway food onboard. And I hope that that grows even further with the sensible packaging of foods and easy concepts that passengers can bring onboard. It will be interesting to see how the packaging solutions develop for warm food options going forward. I think in the United States it’s more typical that you bring your own food on the plane. Here in Europe and maybe also on some of our continental flights, we are still a bit hesitant in doing that.

What are your challenges for this year?

To be honest, it is our passenger numbers due to the overflight bans as a result of the Russian war against Ukraine. The bans are a huge handicap for Finland and for Helsinki Airport for the time being. That is our biggest challenge for us as an airport, for our main airline Finnair, but also for the tourism industry and everything that encompasses.

Caption: Helsinki Airport features many international brands, as well as famous Finnish brands and much-loved cultural icons such as Moomin.
Credit: Finavia

What opportunities are you eyeing up for this year?

One thing that we are doing with the commercial sector is focusing more on the Schengen customer, as well as the European customer, which is a different consumer type than we had before, when we had a lot of transfer from China.

There has been a lot of emphasis on passengers eating before they board the plane, which is great considering we have launched many new food options – although they are not yet buying as much takeaway as I would like. I think that there are a lot of opportunities for growth, but also for enhancing passenger experience and value there.

About the interviewee

Credit: Finavia

Nora Immonen is Vice President of Helsinki Airport and Director of Commercial Business at Finavia. Nora has been a member of and speaker in ACI Commercial forum, Nordic Travel Retail forum, Nordic Council of retail spaces and premises, China airtravel and retail summit etc.

She holds an M.Sc (tech) from Aalto University, major in logistics and international business (2001).