TheMoodieReport.com

TheMoodieReport.com: The Moodie Report is counting down the days till the winner of our inaugural Travel Retail Website of the Year Award is announced at the prestigious Frontier Awards in Cannes on 25 October.

A short list has now been drawn up consisting of 20 worthy contenders and final judging is taking place over coming days.

Since The Moodie Report launched its Travel Retail WebWide Index in November 2005 we have accumulated around 400 travel retail websites (or web pages within a master site) for retailers, airports and airlines around the world. But despite Internet access and usage climbing exponentially, and online shopping fast becoming a favourite retail channel, many companies only offer a meagre fare to hungry travelling shoppers.

Fortunately there is a growing band of companies which understand the value and potential of the web and are realising the incremental benefits it offers in sales terms – through pre-order and promotions – as well as in showcasing the duty free selection. The Moodie Report Travel Retail Web Awards are designed to incentivise companies to exploit the power of the web – and to recognise those which are doing so.

Our in-house team of web experts assisted more recently by three outside judges (Vince Horne, former Head of Diageo Travel Retail, Yan Liang, a Chinese business student at the Groupe Escrennes business school in France and a leading industry retail consultant) have spent weeks sifting through good, bad and - occasionally - ugly websites to identify the final candidates.

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Their remit was to judge each offer from the perspective of a travelling consumer. That hypothetical consumer was surfing various websites, looking for help and advice on what shopping items the retailers offer and how much their items cost – plus any other helpful information (allowances, regulations etc) that is available.

They had a hypothetical shopping basket: A bottle of Boss fragrance; 200 Marlboro cigarettes; a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky; and some M&M’s confectionery – or like-for-like substitutes.

We reviewed every single site on The Moodie Report Travel Retail WebWide Index by asking a series of questions:

• How did they assist our traveller’s search?
• Did they list prices? All prices?
• Did they list products? All products?

We called that criterion Content and rated each site out of 40. We split that, in turn, as follows:

• Product range + pictures + product description = 20

• Pricing (in one or more currencies) = 20

Then we rated the sites for Navigation (ease of use) allowing a maximum of 15 points; Design & Style (15 points), Overall Incentive to Shop (20 points) (tone, promotions, competitions and, importantly, pre-order) and Supplementary Information (10 points) (allowances, currencies, after-sales-service, useful tips and so on) and judged out of a score of 100.


Duty Free Phillipines Duty Free NZ Lufthansa

Muscat Duty Free My Travel Airways Qatar Airways

SAS Flight Shop Singapore Airlines Virgin Atlantic
Our 20 finalists span a broad geographical remit – Asia Pacific, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Scandinavia, and include a wide range of retailers, airlines and airports. Here is our list of finalists - and your opportunity to have your say as make our determining judgement.

All our short-listed sites are reviewed in the latest issue of The Moodie Report Print Edition, out next week. We'll also be naming this month the supplier site that we consider is doing most to champion the travel retail channel.

The Moodie Report Travel Retail Website of the Year Award finalists

Air France
Ambassador Duty Free
Amsterdam Airport Schipol
Brasif
British Airways
Cathay Pacific
Copenhagen Airport
Downtown Duty Free
Duty Free Philippines
Duty Free Stores New Zealand
Korean Air
Lufthansa
Muscat Duty Free
My Travel Airways (Denmark)
Qantas
Qatar Airways
SAS Flight Shop
Singapore Airlines
Singapore Changi Airport
Virgin Atlantic Airways

ABOUT THE FRONTIER AWARDS: The Moodie Report thanks Frontier magazine for the opportunity to participate in this year’s Awards. Frontier has done an outstanding job down the years in building up the event as the 'Oscars' of the industry and we applaud its initiative this year in making the premier Award – Airport/Land-Based Retailer of the Year – open to a public vote (conducted partly via The Moodie Report.com) before the resultant short list was assessed by a high-quality jury. There are still a few places available at the Frontier Awards. Please contact Sarah Genest for details at sarahfrontier@yahoo.co.uk