Once considered as a nice-to-have service to passengers, on-board sales have become in recent year a vital source of ancillary revenues for cash-hungry airlines. At the same time, airport duty-free shops and F&B outlets have spared no effort to compete for the airlines passengers’ bucks. Yet, set aside the recent generalization of on-board computerized Point-of-sales, the inflight retail industry still operates its business with

A service trolley on a B707 – Can you notice any significant change ?

equipment conceived 30 or 40 years ago. As a matter of fact, the trolleys used today for duty-free sales are nearly the same as the ones that flew on Super-Constellation aircrafts.

Unsurprisingly, the airlines channel had been steadily losing market shares

during the last decade against its rival in the Duty-Free and Travel retail global market. No one can expect to compete in a Formula One race driving a vintage Brabham.

Embedding new technologies and innovative processes in inflight retail equipment can effectively boost sales or significantly reduce costs.