Airports & Capitalism

One of the things I’ve long found irksome when traveling is the transformation of airports over time, especially in Asia, into being composed primarily of high end boutiques selling luxury goods.

This may not seem like much to complain about, given that it’s a fair bit more aesthetically pleasing than the industrial corridors and bus connectors that comprised a significant portion of the scenery on a trip through Los Angeles’ LAX airport recently. Nevertheless, it’s a change from the days where airport stores had broader appeal or utility.

One thing that’s striking about these stores is relative to their size, there are usually barely any people in them. This isn’t always true; for some tour groups, their luxury airport purchases are an important part of the overall trip. Still, with a decent personal sample size, it feels like most commonly, the staff are the only people in the store. And yes, the lady walking in the image below works there.

So far, unless you really know your airports, you can’t even tell what airport or country this is. You might also assume I had a connecting flight at odd hours, hence the airport being deserted. But this was around 7pm in Tokyo’s Haneda airport, and if you walk far enough to get to the less central departure gates, there’s a different picture:

That line is for people who have already picked out their items, and are just waiting for the cashier. It’s longer than it looks, because it turns to the right and runs the length of the store. Fast food places and other “normal” stores were also relatively busy.

I get that 7 Eleven probably needs to serve around a thousand customers – possibly more – to generate the profit that just one well-heeled patron of a luxury goods store generates with a single handbag purchase, which is why we have this dynamic. These photos are also just a single snapshot of a well documented trend of consumer goods makers increasingly focusing on the very rich, that’s been widely reported on.

Still, I find this example to be particularly galling, because this isn’t a shopping mall – it’s an airport. One that like all airports was constructed to serve the public, and very likely built with taxpayer dollars. No doubt the airport is just trying to balance its books by selling retail space to the highest bidders, but the end result is wasted space and human capital, and an underserved public.