Passenger Terminal World - Passenger Terminal World January 2026
Side hustle
2025-12-06 10:21:41
It’s time to take a closer look at how airport lounges co-exist with the F&B offer at airports, says tRetail Labs
What was once a relatively predictable cohabitation between airport lounges and F&B concessions has given way to a competitive blur. As the lines between categories dissolve, airports find themselves at the intersection of spatial complexity, emotional overload and rising traveler expectations.
Lounges used to be tucked-away havens. Now, they sit atop prime concourse real estate, competing directly with flagship bars and restaurants. The culinary standard in lounges has risen dramatically, and with day passes more accessible than ever, airports need to be able to tangibly measure direct and indirect cannibalization impacts.
This is about more than dollars; it’s about risks to customer satisfaction through displaced intention and fragmented experiences. Friction arises when lounges unintentionally siphon footfall, when zoning fails to match emotional intent, and when the very spaces designed to serve different purposes now blur into one another.
“Airport F&B outlets are no longer just competing with the outlet across the aisle; they are competing with access/credit cards,” says Andrew Weddig, executive director of the Airport Restaurant and Retail Association.
The result? Subtle frictions between categories that were not thought to compete. This misalignment isn’t always confrontational; it’s quiet, systemic and often missed in conventional planning frameworks. And that’s exactly why it matters.
tRetail Labs believes the frameworks that once governed airport commercial planning are no longer fit for purpose. It’s time for airports, lounge operators, F&B concessionaires and CX strategists to co-create a new universal standard.
Research needed
As lounge access broadens and culinary standards rise, lounges have become more than just resting places; they’re commercial anchors, experience zones and, sometimes, direct competitors with the airport F&B ecosystem. The problem? Airports are still planning and measuring as if these two domains exist in parallel.
This isn’t about minor overlaps or occasional passenger trade-offs. It has become a systemic issue with real commercial consequences: misaligned experiences, disjointed emotional flows and suboptimal revenue capture. In terminals where a flagship lounge is located near a marquee restaurant, travelers may opt for the ‘all-inclusive’ lounge offering over paid dining – a decision driven not just by price but by emotional readiness, perceived convenience, an earned privilege from either annual fees or external transactions, and brand expectations.
Yet the current planning frameworks used by most airport commercial teams do not quantify this interplay. The challenge is not just commercial leakage; it’s an experience misfit, where passenger expectations are inadvertently undermined by fragmented strategies. This disconnect is particularly pronounced in US airports, where diverse terminal layouts, third-party operators and multiple loyalty/access schemes complicate every planning decision.
Unless addressed, this will continue to cost airports in three ways: suboptimal revenues from F&B outlets; unintended friction between lounges and commercial zones; and weakened passenger satisfaction due to emotional dissonance.
To address this challenge, tRetail Labs aims to partner with airports and lounge and F&B operators to spearhead a first-of-its-kind research initiative that maps the dynamic interplay between lounges and F&B zones, uncovering traveler decision-making patterns and emotional transitions, and helping to balance the revenue and cost implications for airports and other stakeholders, to facilitate an optimal lounge/F&B continuum.
This is not just a conceptual exercise. Using behavioral data, traveler interviews and commercial performance indicators from multiple airport terminals, the findings will be shared with stakeholders through the publication of a research paper, a white paper tailored for commercial executives, and panel presentations at leading forums. Airport-specific deep dives and collaborative design strategy sessions for early-adopter terminals that sign up for the academic research initiative will be given. PTW readers can contact Sushanta Das at sushanta.das@tretaillabs.com or Prof. Dr Thorsten Merkle at thorsten.merkle@tretaillabs.com to contribute to this initiative. n
MORE THAN 1,500 US TRAVELERS TOOK PART IN A 2025 STUDY CONDUCTED BY TRETAIL LABS & ZURICH UNIVERSITY
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Side hustle
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