BAA: who wants to buy a sofa at an airport?

Posted on Wednesday 12 December, 2007
Filed Under Society

 


I’ve long regarded airports controlled by private sector monopoly BAA as essentially overgrown shopping malls with the odd runway attached.

But it looks like Heathrow’s terminal five – which opens next March – doesn’t make much pretence of being anything much more than a glorified Bluewater Centre with good airline connections.

Here’s Nick Ziebland, ‘retail strategy director’ of BAA, which is now own by Ferrovial, a Spanish company that started life as a construction firm building barracks for fascist armies under the Franco dictatorship:

“Come early; tell your friends. I think we need to bring back some of the glamour of travel and make it almost a destination its own right.” …

“I want to be the first airport to sell a sofa,” said Mr Ziebland, dodging shopfitters at the Paul Smith store, which is waiting for doors from a French chateau.

Look, if I want to go shopping, I can always hop on a 73 bus to the West End. Now that duty free has been abolished, and fags and booze are no longer cheapo cheapo, what’s the point of buying things at airports and then having to lug them halfway round the world before getting to consume them?

OK, airports should offer the chance to pick up a cup of coffee, and maybe a few pairs of Y-fronts if not enough clean undergarments were to hand during packing. That’s about it. No retail opportunities in the world can compensate travellers for hanging around for hours with only a £1.75 food voucher from BA as compensation.

In my book, a well-designed airport is one that maximises passenger throughput, and minimises time spent waiting, either off or on the aircraft. With a delay record like BAA’s, selling sofas should really be the last thing on its mind.


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Comments

5 Responses to “BAA: who wants to buy a sofa at an airport?”

  1. Jeff
    on December 12th, 2007 at 14:16

    Has duty free been got rid of? I thought it was only within the EU. I got a lifetime’s worth of Golden Virginia at JFK on my way home from holiday.

    Belated thanks to the official who realised I was unaware of customs restrictions rather than a major international tobacco smuggler and let me through.

  2. paddy garcia
    on December 12th, 2007 at 15:08

    Do you not see the logic here? Sofas to sleep off those delays on.

  3. Miles
    on December 12th, 2007 at 15:36

    Now now Dave

    Every minute you don’t consume you are a traitor to our Brownsian economic miracle.

    Building a new airport with extended shopping facilities while claiming to be green is a display of front of a special kind.

    That’s Delboy style front – rather than the united or popular variety.

  4. Karl-Marx-Straße
    on December 12th, 2007 at 20:13

    With a delay record like BAA’s, selling sofas should really be the last thing on its mind

    “Should”…

    But with a delay record like BAA’s, maximising the amount of money they can get out of stranded travellers and trying to give them something to do (if you count “browsing in shops” as actually “doing” something, which I don’t, but it seems to be the number 1 leisure activity these days, in the UK at least) – in the hope it will prevent them from rioting. I’m thinking of Ballard again.

  5. Karl-Marx-Straße
    on December 12th, 2007 at 20:16

    missing from that comment is (after “rioting”) “is probably their main priority.”