Mondelez WTR unveils ‘Destination Value’ growth vision, calling for industry-wide category action

Mondelez World Travel Retail (WTR), yesterday hosted a virtual event to unveil its new traveler-centric growth vision for the channel, called ‘Destination: Value’. The live webinar introduced a strategic framework to redefine the meaning of value in travel retail, increase collaboration between stakeholders in the Trinity, and unlock incremental growth opportunities across the channel.

At the heart of the ‘Destination: Value’ vision is a bold reimagining of duty free — transforming the journey itself into the reward for the traveler. Backed by research investment and global data partnerships, Mondelez WTR’s evidence-based strategy identifies the dynamics shaping traveler behavior and outlines a clear plan to grow the confectionery category and the wider travel retail industry.

The event was hosted by Joost Rosmuller, Vice President and Managing Director, Mondelez World Travel Retail, and Anna Somogyi, Director of Category, Customer & Shopper Marketing, Mondelez World Travel Retail; and featured expert insights from Richard Shotton, a renowned behavioral scientist and author of The Choice Factory.

The power of behavioral science

To uncover the drivers behind traveling shoppers’ evolving behaviors, Mondelez WTR invested extensively in research, collaborating with leading experts and incorporating insights from industry specialists including m1nd-set, TFWA, Kearney, and Pi Insights. The study encompassed 7,200 interviews across 32 airports, 12 focus groups, and in-depth assessments with behavioural scientists, with the findings fueling the creation and depth of the ‘Destination: Value’ vision.

Redefining value in travel retail

The session kicked off with a summary of the long-debated industry KPIs concerning the decline in penetration and transaction value figures. The Mondelez World Travel Retail team described these trends as signals of transformation that tell us that the traveler’s mindset has shifted – from transactional to experiential, from passive to purposeful.

This deep understanding of the traveler mindset, and how that knowledge can be leveraged in travel retail, were the cornerstones of the webinar. In response, Mondelez World Travel Retail is leading a call for collaborative action to rethink what value means in travel retail – beyond the decades-long focus on price communication as a north star to boost penetration.

The Mondelez team shared that while optimizing price and promotion communication will remain key, there is much more to boosting value. To drive overall value perception, the industry needs to rebalance its focus on cost versus experience. This can be achieved by lowering the cost for travelers in terms of the actual price and the invested time required to find the product. Complementing this approach, maximizing the experience by adding trusted brands, more reward, and relevant offers will help to meet more travelers’ needs and shift their overall perception of value.

Behavioral science drives changes in shopper marketing

Richard Shotton then explored how behavioural science reveals the real drivers behind shopper decisions. He explained that consumers often respond instinctively to subtle cues rather than pure price mechanics. His research found that shoppers are more excited by the chance to win a bigger reward than by a fixed discount and perceive limited-quantity offers as better value. “Anyone in sales or marketing is in the business of behaviour change,” Shotton noted, adding that behavioral science enables brands to act on what truly drives decisions. Mondelez WTR’s growth vision, he said, exemplifies evidence-based action that strengthens engagement across global travel retail.

The Mondelez WTR team has previously offered strategic, industry-wide growth plans, rooted in data-driven insights. Back in 2012, the team unveiled its transformative ‘Delighting Travelers’ vision that inspired more engaging visibility for the entire confectionery category. Over the course of a decade, the ‘hidden category’ became a strategic pillar in most travel retail stores globally – and the team hopes to achieve equally significant shifts with its ‘Destination: Value’ growth vision.

The main growth will come from four drivers:

·       Drive Consideration – Encourage more travelers to plan to buy during their time in the total travel retail journey

·       Drive Penetration – Turn more travelers into shoppers

·       Drive Volume – Increase the number of products sold along the journey – either in one store, or across an increasing number of stores

·       Drive Value – Persuade travelers to spend more on an item or items

A call for industry collaboration

Concluding the session, Joost Rosmuller, Vice President and Managing Director at Mondelez World Travel Retail, said: “I want to emphasize one simple truth: this knowledge is important to all of us. What we’ve explored today – from behavioral insights to value perception – is not proprietary. It’s foundational. It’s the kind of understanding that lifts the entire channel.

“Travel retail doesn’t grow through isolated wins. It grows when we align – on what matters to travelers, on how we define value, and on how we activate it across categories and touchpoints. Whether you’re a brand, a retailer, an airport, or a partner – this is shared ground and the more we collaborate, the more we grow the total.”

An exclusive with Global Travel Retail Magazine

In conversation with Global Travel Retail Magazine after the webinar, Somogyi also revisited Mondelez’s 2012 ‘Delighting Travelers’ vision, a pivotal moment when the company recognized that the confectionery category needed transformation. The goal then was to bring inspiration and transformation to the category, to make confectionery exciting, visible, and valuable.

More than a decade later, Somogyi noted real progress: “Now, when confectionery has the chance to bring excitement, it drives penetration and basket size as well.” Yet she urged the industry not to wait another ten years for the next leap forward. “If we act together, we can be faster,” she said, emphasizing that the ambition now extends beyond confectionery to “the total industry, the way we can change things together.”

Somogyi described the 'Destination: Value' research as “the way we can reimagine duty free and make every journey a reward.” Mondelez’s strategy is built around four key growth drivers that focus on the entire shopper journey, not just the store. “We need to think about the whole mindset and the whole journey of the shopper,” she explained.

The first growth driver, Drive Consideration, begins before the trip, encouraging travelers to plan to shop and “see the airport as a worthwhile place to buy something.” The second, Drive Penetration, aims to get more travelers to enter the store and make a purchase. Drive Volume focuses on increasing the number of items bought, whether in the same store or across multiple touchpoints, supported by cross-category pairing and multi-occasion offers. Finally, Drive Value seeks to inspire higher spending through differentiated, premium experiences that make travelers “feel it’s worthwhile to spend more and be happy about it.”

Somogyi explained that these strategic pillars are underpinned by ten tangible, data-driven actions drawn from surveys and industry discussions. These actions include identifying the most effective touchpoints to boost consideration, using emotional triggers to drive store entry, removing purchase barriers, and enhancing vendor incentives. “The experiential activation, and the way we speak about products, remains critical,” she added. While many retailers already practice elements of this strategy, she warned that “we often do these things in silos, one store at a time.” To truly transform travel retail, Somogyi urged the industry to “think about the total journey and start earlier, with boosting consideration,” calling for collaboration and scale to bring these insights fully to life.