The Changing Landscape of Duty-Free

Out of town retail and travel retail outside of Europe seems to be dramatically changing its landscape; duty-free doesn’t purely exist in airports and stations, it’s amongst malls and entertainments parks, close to transport hubs. 

Barber are often approached for these out-of-the-box concepts and it’s our second nature to be curious and explore the possibilities. The photo below shows the development we’re working on called La Petisquera, in Brazil which includes a very large duty-free store anchoring the retail side of the development. This new attraction will also include a 5-star hotel, leisure park, water park, Jurassic Park, Ice Bar, Harley Davidson Restaurant Experience and much, much more.

The area chosen for this development is Foz do Iguaça which is within the City called Paraná and people visit the area due to the incredible Iguaçu Falls. La Petisquera are a well established south American travel retailer founded by the Mannah family in 1970. They currently have border and airport shops and have four downtown stores in the City and the group have been operating Departure and Arrivals stores for seven years in the Silvio Pettirossi International Airport in Asuncion. This new store, slated to open mid-2024 will be 1,870sqm (20,000 sq. feet). The Dreams Park however did open during 2023, but this new retail area creates an even bigger draw for customers on top of what is already available.

Alejandro Mannah from the Mannah Group said; “Along with our partners, we are developing a world-class Duty Free environment in Foz do Iguaçu. This is one of the most important tourist and shopping destinations in Brazil, which is visited by several million travellers on an annual basis. People come here in cars, buses and planes from Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and beyond. Now in addition to great and varied tourist sites, we can give them a great shopping experience. We believe this is the next logical step towards the evolution of our company to become an even more significant player in the Duty Free / Travel Retail business in the region.” Mannah said, “The tourists who come to this region tend to be regional, but we are seeing more and more from North America, Europe and further away. Our team will make sure we will have the right product selection for all visitors.”

A spokesperson for Dreams Park commented, “We are pleased to have been able to find the perfect duty free partner for our ambitious plans to develop Dreams Park as the most exiting entertainment and amusement destination for visiting travellers in this highly popular tourist destination, Foz do Iguaçu. With ‘La Petisquera’ bringing the best brands and retail offers in an exciting shop environment, we believe Dreams Park will deliver an unparalleled shopping and entertainment experience.”

Doug said “We are delighted that Barber was selected to be the interior design firm of choice for this innovative and monumental leisure destination. With over 24 years of duty-free experience now across the word this seemed like a perfect challenge for the barber team.

The project has been quite complex due to the gentle curve within the entire architecture of the building. There are virtually no straight lines in the building!

We had to first plan out the customer flow and escalator locations, lifts, means of escape, entrance, exit and customer navigation throughout the retail spaces before focussing on the design of the shop itself.  

The duty-free store will extend across two floors and is almost 2,000 SQM is total space with a variety of interesting features and draws to guide the customer through the space. Having undertaken a site visit and seen first-hand this mesmerising part of the world, we have taken influence from the beauty of the surrounding area and utilised calming and natural materials in the store to relax customers on their shopping mission, and we have developed a sense of place inspired by the awesome Foz do Iguaça waterfalls, famously known as one of the seven wonders of the world.

We can’t wait to show how creative and pioneering the store is, together with our client, we’ve been able to push the design brief in order to deliver simply stunning Duty Free shop interiors within the travel retail sector”.