With Sales Stalled, LAX Has Some Big Changes in Store

To ease a five-hour wait at Los Angeles International Airport recently, law student Cynthia Leibman was looking to find a copy of “The Mists of Avalon” in a nondescript sundries shop.

But the 876-page Arthurian fairy tale--surprise--was nowhere to be found among wall displays filled with bodice rippers and murder mysteries.

“They usually just have bestsellers at these stores,” said Leibman, who was on her way home to New Jersey after vacationing at Yosemite. “I wish there was more selection.”

Leibman is not alone. About two-thirds of the 1,735 travelers who responded to a recent survey at LAX said they would like to see better-stocked bookstores at the world’s third-largest airport.

Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that runs LAX and three other airports, commissioned the study as part of a plan to cash in on a trend toward mall-like shopping that’s taking off at airports nationwide.

The survey found what many seasoned travelers already know: Shopping at LAX doesn’t measure up to L.A.’s reputation as a world-class consumption capital.

The airport’s retail shops, stocked primarily with look-alike souvenirs, candy and magazines, ranked well below average among airports that serve at least 30 million passengers a year, according to the study, by Agoura-based J.D. Power and Associates.

Newer and remodeled airports in Denver, Orlando, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Atlanta ranked above average.

The city agency plans to overhaul LAX’s retail offerings next year when a contract expires with its master concessionaire. This operator, W.H. Smith, runs 90% of the facility’s 41 retail outlets.

Officials hope a slate of name-brand stores will entice the two out of three passengers who don’t buy anything at the airport today to open their wallets.

There’s a lot of money to be made. The average LAX passenger earns about $72,000 a year. Couple that with the two hours of time to kill that a typical passenger has when traveling through the airport and it adds up to “millions of dollars a year,” said Michael Taylor, director of travel services at J.D. Power.

For inspiration, LAX might look toward several of the country’s smaller airports, such as Pittsburgh International or Portland International, which pioneered the concept of mall-like airport shopping in the late 1980s.

“Pittsburgh found you can sell an awful lot of ladies’ lingerie at an airport,” Taylor said. “They figured out a long time ago that the more stores you put in the departure area . . . the more money you make.”

Pittsburgh and Portland feature a mix of nationally recognized brands and locally run stores with themes that reflect the region’s culture. For instance, stores at Denver’s airport have a Western theme, offering cowboy hats and local artwork.

The transformation of airports like Pittsburgh and Portland into shopping malls has proven popular not only with passengers, but with local residents as well.

In fact, stores at Portland’s airport, which serves 13.5 million passengers a year, are so popular that local residents come to the facility just to shop, said Jeanne Raikoglo, senior manager of concessions development for the Port of Portland, which operates the airport. Portland updated its shops when it revamped its central terminal in 1988.

“A man wrote me that he got stranded in the airport on Christmas Eve and said he was frantic that he hadn’t done his shopping,” she said. “But he went through the stores here and was able to buy everything he needed.”

Another key to Portland’s success: It requires airport merchants to charge street prices for their goods--a departure from the premium prices that passengers have become accustomed to at airports.

A similar policy in Pittsburgh has helped the airport quadruple its retail concession revenues after it opened a new terminal in 1992, said Mark Knight, regional director for BAA USA, the airport’s concession operator.

BAA advertises the airport’s retail philosophy as “down-to-earth pricing,” and offers a “rip-off guarantee”--customers are invited to call an airport hotline if they think something was priced too high, Knight said.

About 10% of passengers surveyed by BAA say they chose to fly through the airport because of its retail offerings, which include the Gap, Victoria’s Secret and others, Knight said.

Like Portland and Pittsburgh, the city agency that operates LAX saw revenue from its restaurant concessions triple seven years ago when it brought in brand-name stores such as Wolfgang Puck, Starbucks and La Salsa, said Ramon Olivares, concessions manager at LAX.

He said officials are considering a street-level pricing requirement at new retail outlets, but first it faces several challenges in bringing in name-brand shops--chief among them finding room.

“On the top of everyone’s list is ‘How much space are you going to give us?’ ” Olivares said. “Unfortunately, we’re so old that what you see is what you get.”