Re-defining luxury in the airport’s transitory environment during the post-Covid era

Abstract

The airport provides a unique environment for luxury. The transitory airport space is driven by notions of luxury, leisure, pleasure, and the exotic; they are places of possibility and desire. Since the first duty-free store was established in 1947 at Shannon airport in Ireland, international airports are now considered luxury shopping destinations in themselves. Today, luxury brand stores provide a unique offering, experience, and sensory engagement within the airport environment, which drives the desire for luxurious experiences. This paper demonstrates how the demand for luxury in the airport exists during the post-pandemic era. Despite a severe decline in 2020 due to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, the overall global luxury market has bounced back to almost pre-Covid-19 levels. Simultaneously, the interest in air travel continues to grow, which drives the desire for passengers to visit the luxury brands in the airport. This paper considers how, despite the setbacks of the Covid-19 pandemic, luxury brands maintain a stable identity in the airport. The physical store remains a crucial element of a luxury brand and contributes to the understanding of “what is luxury”; it maintains its status as the best place to experience the difference between luxury and non-luxury. Through an investigation of literature and case studies, this paper considers how luxury brands present themselves, how luxury brand identities are communicated, and how the experience of luxury is articulated, and perpetuated within the airport transitory environment.

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