Experience-first travellers are transforming beauty travel retail from discount-driven counters into immersive stages, reshaping global competition.

For nearly two years, travel retail weighed heavily on results at Estée Lauder, L’Oréal, Shiseido, and others, particularly in Asia where daigou disruptors (personal shoppers who buy luxury goods and resell them) and an uneven tourism recovery pushed the channel into volatility.

Now, the market is stabilizing. Passenger volumes are rising across Asia and Europe, cosmetic and fragrance counters are seeing renewed footfall, and the consumer profile passing through airports is younger, digitally fluent, and driven less by bargain-hunting and more by experience.