For many air travellers they are the highlight and a fixed element of every flight: visits to the duty-free shop. The French company Aelia is one of the world’s leading operators of duty-free shops and provides passengers at many international airports with eventful shopping enjoyment.
On 20 June 2012 at the Lyon/ St Exupéry Airport, 4 Aelia duty-free shops were opened. The total area of 1,143m², divided into the areas of food, tobacco & beverages, consumer electronics and beauty/fashion, is spread over 4 terminals. In these shopping areas, customers can find all of the well-known French and international brands as well as national specialities.
The development of the concept of the Aelia duty-free stores was carried out by the architects’ office IMLC/ Paris. Vizona SARL/ Paris were entrusted with the project management, the technical development and the production and assembly of all of the furniture and wall units. The international roll-out is also being implemented by Vizona.
In this connection, Ansorg France was responsible for the lighting. In the modern and high-class store concept the colour black was used for the sales area “Tobacco & Beverages”, the colour white for the area of beauty & fashion as well as light oak for the food store.
The store and lighting concept internalises the core message of the Aelia brand, insight, innovation and results: first of all it is necessary to satisfy the particular wishes of the travellers in the best possible way. For customers pressed for time, the shops provide a fast overview of the range, a simple, swift and practical shopping along the corridor to the departure gate. For others the shops provide an exclusive shopping experience, the special flair of which makes the waiting time seem much shorter for the customers. The communicating of innovation and constant renewal for satisfying individual customers’ wishes is in this case a core message from Aelia.
The lighting concept is marked by brightness which draws the customers into the shops, as well as by orientation and perfect scene setting for the merchandise. Product lighting is achieved over the whole area by means of recessed gimbal-mounted luminaires with 50-W HIT lamps which produce brilliant colour rendition of the colourful, variegated range. For the goods-orientated, uniform accentuation of the rear walls, wide-beam flood reflectors are used.
The individual product shelves are illuminated with a narrower beam with the help of medium-flood reflectors. Additional luminaires with very narrow-beam spot reflectors emphasise the shelf tops. Aisle illumination is completely dispensed with in order to increasingly help the individual goods carriers to gain centre stage. Additional spotlights along the entrance areas here produce increased brightness which is meant to attract the customers into the shops like a magnet.
Besides the cash desk areas, the towers with information monitors in the shop are also illuminated with LED luminaires so as to optimise the visual comfort for the customers and the staff.
