Cannes_2026_TUESDAY_ISSUE_DIGITAL

Illuminete x Trinax: Rethinking travel retail experiences I lluminete is a strategic brand and retail experience consultancy that partners with premium brands to create distinctive, market-ready experiences. For the TFWA Start Up Day, Illuminete is partnering with Trinax, an experience and transformation partner specialising in interactive and immersive experiences, creative technology, UX/UI, software development and systems integration. “Together, we combine brand strategy, retail experience design and creative technology to create experiences that give travellers more compelling reasons to stop, discover, engage and choose, while building the brand and improving commercial effectiveness,” explain Elssy Teo, Brand Experience Director, Illuminete, and Joel Goh, Founder & CEO, Trinax. “Our collective experience spans premium and luxury beauty, wines & spirits, lifestyle, travel retailers and airport operators, with brands and organisations including Cartier, Chanel, Changi Airport Group, Edrington, Estée Lauder, L’Oréal, Moët Hennessy, Shiseido, The Shilla and Treasury Wine Estates.” The main objective of Illuminete x Trinax during the TFWA Start Up Day is to have meaningful conversations with brands, retailers and airport operators about the growth challenges and opportunities they are looking to address next. “That could mean entering travel retail, attracting more travellers into store, creating more intuitive ways for travellers to discover a brand, understand a product or make a choice, launching something new, or reimagining an experience for its next phase of growth,” say Elssy Teo and Joel Goh. “We believe innovation should start with the challenge, not the format. Sometimes the answer may be a new retail concept Joel Goh, Founder & CEO, Trinax, and Elssy Teo, Brand Experience Director, Illuminete. or immersive activation; sometimes it may be simply improving one important moment in the traveller journey. In Cannes, we’re looking forward to exchanging perspectives with brands, retailers and airport operators on where they see the next opportunities for growth, and exploring how brand thinking, experience design and creative technology could address them. For us, TFWA is ultimately about starting meaningful conversations and building partnerships that can develop over time.” A ltavia Travel Retail, part of the Altavia Group, is a specialised global agency dedicated to travel retail. Backed by 18 years of industry experience, it provides strategy consulting, retail architecture, creative services, and implementation management. “From designing and implementing a brand activation at Heathrow to creating a new store concept at Changi, to planning the non-aero strategy of a terminal in Riyadh, we approach travel retail from different perspectives,” says Hugo Vanderschaegh, Head of Altavia Travel Retail. “Our core mission is to craft the traveller’s journey from the terminal to the store to the shelf and convert international passengers into engaged shoppers.” Altavia Travel Retail: Designing the journey from passenger to shopper For Altavia Travel Retail, the TFWA Start Up Day is a unique opportunity to connect, discuss ongoing projects, and also have more strategic conversations about the future of travel retail. “Our pitch will focus on experience and results-driven retail design, demonstrating how immersive storytelling and spatial innovation directly translate into measurable commercial success and footfall conversion,” Vanderschaegh explains. “During our pitch session, we will highlight our best-in-class flagship executions, including our newly launched, interactive KitKat activation at Singapore Changi Airport, alongside some of our recent large-scale luxury activations and shop-in-shops. Through these case studies, we will share how strategic spatial design, category strategy, and passenger engagement convert transient footfall into proven spend- per-passenger growth for both brands and operators.” Vanderschaegh adds that Altavia Travel Retail’s competitive advantage rests on two primary differentiators: • A 360° ecosystem perspective: “We approach travel retail from every angle of the passenger journey – the terminal, the store, and the display – because we actively work for all three main stakeholders: hub operators, retailers, and brands.” • Global footprint with regional expertise: “We combine on-the- ground specialised travel retail teams in key international hubs (Europe, Middle East, Asia-Pacific) with the scale and infrastructure of the Altavia Group (2,800 employees across 50 countries).” Tuesday 29 September 2026 32 T F W A D A I L Y