Airport Bookstores cash in on flight delays

Mumbai: Book stores across Indian airports are offering books, usual and unusual, to travellers who bear the brunt of India’s bursting-at-the-seams airports. The six-month old bookstore at Mumbai’s airport run by Crossword, a 43-store chain owned byShopper’s Stop Ltd, does three times as much sales per sq. ft than the chain’s city book stores.
Traditionally, small and musty airport bookstores that stored magazines and tourist guides and little else have got a makeover with national book chains, including Crosswords, Sankars and HigginBothams taking over airport book stores across India—from Mumbai and Bangalore to smaller cities such as Cochin, Coimbatore, Panjim and Ahmedabad.
In 2006, Indian airports handled 33 million passengers. Even as the number of passengers has grown by 25% over the past three years, delays at the busy Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore airports have increased to at least half an hour for every flight.
For retailers, airports deliver high-spending shoppers who have time on their hands.
Typically, more people come in to these bookstores than city stores and a larger proportion of those who come in buy something because they have some time to spare and little else to do.
16/07/07 Saumya Roy/Livemint

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Categories: Airports Jul 2007