Avolta, the Swiss-based global leader in airport duty free shops (Fortune 500 Europe No. 274) best known in the U.S. for its Hudson stores, on Wednesday announced it was awarded the first duty-free contract for an international operator in mainland China in 26 years, giving it the right to open stores in Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport, the 8th largest in the world.
Under the terms of the deal, Avolta, which operates over 5,000 stores in over 1,000 locations worldwide, will set up 43 stores and restaurants across its duty free, duty paid, and food and beverage categories in the Shanghai airport, covering over 85,000 sq ft (8,000 m2). The company did not disclose the size of the deal in financial terms.
The Chinese government, which has yet to comment on the deal, has been courting foreign retail companies in recent years. At a November conference, Vice Commerce Minister Sheng Qiuping invited foreign groups to invest in Chinese retail to “strengthen confidence in long-term growth.” China has long been trying to shepherd its economy from one that is export- and production-based to one that is more consumption-based.
Avolta CEO Xavier Rossinyol, a Catalan-Spanish industry veteran who has led the company since 2021, attributed the win to his company playing the long game in China.
“There was a complete lack of belief in the industry that what is happening […] would ever happen,” Rossinyol said in an interview with Fortune prior to the official announcement. “And we have been the company making that happen.”
For three and a half years, Avolta has built a local team in China and invested in “creating the know-how of the market, etc.,” he said. “From a European or North American point of view, that patience, it didn’t make too much sense. But from the local market point of view, that patience, it was necessary.”
Avolta is the global leader in the travel retail sector, with full year sales in 2024 of CHF 13.7 billion ($17.2 billion), and a leading position in both North America and Europe, but a weaker presence in Asia. It aims to sustain an annual organic growth rate of 5 to 7% in the upcoming years.
The Avolta announcement comes amid a boom in the global travel retail sector but a slowdown in the U.S. Globally, the sector, which operates shops and restaurants in airports, is expected to post sales of approximately $68 billion in 2025, with strong annual growth of between 8 and 10% projected until 2030.
But strong regional differences underlie the global picture. The U.S., historically a strong market for travel retail, has been flat in the past year, according to Rossinyol, whereas Europe— especially the tourism hotspots of Spain, Italy, and Greece—experienced an unexpected surge, despite the European economy being at a near standstill.
The most important growth market, though, for both the industry as a whole and Avolta, Rossinyol said, is Asia-Pacific. The mega region counts for about half of the global market, and within the region, China and its travelers dominate. But until now, Western companies like Avolta have achieved only a limited presence in the region and no direct presence at all inside mainland China’s airports, which had long favored state-owned operators.
“If I look at the next five years, and I look also not only at the organic growth, but also at the capacity to acquire or to get new spaces, probably the biggest change for our portfolio will be Asia-Pacific,” Rossinyol said. “We have a lot of potential to grow there.”
