I pit airport duty free

The BBQ Pit
1

I just flew out of BKK ( Suvarnabhumi Airport, Thailand) for like the 6th time, and I hate hate hate their duty free areas.

Scenario: arrive at curb, wander to airline drop bag areas, which are always mobbed. Most airlines try to make that smooth, but it’s a lot of standing for everyone, hurry up and wait. Then security, which at BKK isn’t terrible. But this all takes quite a while, coupla’ hours.

At this point, you’re ready to pee, buy water, maybe eat. You’ve been standing and queueing for 1-2+ hours. You’re ready for a break - get some water, find your gate. Get settled. I don’t have water because it can’t traverse security, and I’d really like to hydrate.

And they dump you into a tunnel/gauntlet of what must be at least a kilometer (maybe 2!) of Duty Free shops before you can find someplace to sit or pee or eat. Buy Versace! Gucci! Armani! Dior! All this shit most travelers don’t care about. Consume, bitches!

Good god, can we at least arrange all these shops around restaurants and fucking bathrooms?! Instead a bazillion people trudge trudge trudge past all this crap that interests 5% of the crowd just to find a bench or hydration or a fucking bathroom.

I’ve been to Hong Kong airport and it’s much better: they arrange everything in a bit of a circle, interleaving these “who cares?” shops with bathrooms, places to eat, basic facilities. BKK has none of that - you have to march the endless gauntlet of shops. At the end may be a drinking fountain. Maybe.

I’ve also been to Tokyo/Haneda HND and it’s about as bad as BKK: forced march past a shorter (but still 100s of meters) collection of shops that don’t sell food or water and there’s no bathrooms, no seating, but would you like 2 liters of Glenfiddich?!? Then finally some shops with food and water.

I have bad feet – it hurts to walk. Can you not make me march past 100s of meters of this crap with no benches, no water, no nothing? I mean, I just got through bag check and security. I’m dehydrated and I need to pee!

2

A lot of airports feel like shopping malls, with planes. I felt like we’d never get out of Frankfurt Airport.

3

Oddly, BKK Suvarnabhumi Airport and HND/Haneda are just fine to fly into. You unload from the plane, traverse passport check, get bag, go to curb. Immigration is never wonderful, but not that bad. It’s flying out that sucks.

4

This is the kind of thing I’m talking about. Where the fuck is the bathroom? (there isn’t one!) Can your shop sell me a bottle of fucking water? (no!). Can I have a bench to rest? (no!) Can I have a goddamn conveyor belt at least and skip all this crap? No! Must shop!

I think 3 of those pics, possibly all, are from BKK. But there’s lot’s of traveler unfriendly airports like this.

You have to traverse this crap to get to a gate, any gate. Or a bathroom. Or a shop with water!

5

Every international terminal is going that way as they’re being remodeled. Those stores sell an amazing amount of merchandise. Far more than 5% of people buy stuff there. Making the entire crowd traverse the length of it is just good business. For them.

I agree that if you (any you) need water and a bathroom, it’d be smarter for them to place a set of those services just past security. Many airports do have that. Not all, as you know.

My complaint about duty free is that as an American, I can usually buy most of these classic DF products like booze, perfume, and tobacco cheaper at home. So most of that display is aimed at folks from countries with higher duties and less developed retail infrastructure than me.

6

As I said, I have bad feet. It hurts to walk. Making me schlep a kilometer past all this crap without a bench or bathroom is cruel.

7

I never thought I’d feel grateful for American airports, but looking at that shiny torture chamber of extravagance it makes me realize how lucky I am. Seats everywhere, expensive stores and restaurants and little convenience stores staggered around, and plenty of rest rooms.

8

I don’t get why ANYONE buys shit before they get on a plane. Is it that good of a deal? Water and a snack we get of course.

My Wife and I find our gate and a couple of seats. I guard the luggage while she might mosey to a newsstand. Then we read our Kindles or whatever.

9

I could never fathom why anyone would frequent these. I guess that’s a partial explanation, but is the price/availability difference really that great? I’d think that anyone that could afford that stuff–not to mention travel internationally–would not be too concerned about a few percent price difference, and have other means of buying it.

Are the storefronts an illusion? Maybe the typical buyer is actually ordering large crates of cigarettes to be shipped home, and those expensive bottles of scotch are just for show.

There’s something about them that I just don’t get, like the mattress store phenomenon.

10

It mystifies me every time I take a flight out of SeaTac and pass the Sub Pop store in the main terminal. That’s exactly what I’m looking to carry on to the plane with me - vinyl LPs.

11

Maybe; but on the other hand, where in the US can you find a Toblerone big enough to brain a child with?

12

I have bought something when we needed something for a trip and it was forgotten or lost or broken. Recently my daughter’s headphones were broken and she had her tablet with her, and we wanted to make sure she could hear her games and videos and not bother anyone around her.

The headphones we bought were overpriced, and nothing special. But they worked and were needed. It was worth it.

I did something similar for a neck pillow when my neck started to really bug me on a flight, I grabbed it at an airport during a layover. It was really expensive, but I’ll admit that it’s really nice, and I still have it and use it on flights.

The other sort of thing I might buy is a last-minute souvenir. You can sometimes find something really cheap, like a refrigerator magnet, if you’re just looking for anything that you can give as a gift, then it can do in a pinch. (And my wife likes to collect those sorts of things, so they’re not a bad deal.)

It’s Seattle, there’s a novelty for some people to buy such things from the “Home of Grunge” or whatever. (Folks like you and me who are from the area might think it’s stupid but I guarantee that there are tourists who are tickled by the idea.)

13

Sure.

Again, sure. But was it specifically a duty free shop? Seems like people try to get deals there. I very much doubt they do.

14

It’s not just airports. About 10 years ago, a station on the Melbourne underground was remodelled after they built a whacking great shopping centre on top of it.
It used to have street-level escalators taking you straight down to the platform level, with video displays of times of train departures - ie - get to the station, check whether I need to hurry or not, or ring the wife and say - ‘Oh shit, I may be some time’.

Now, you have to walk about 100 metres into the shopping arcade, then down a small escalator (to level 2), another 50 metres along to the next escalator which takes you to level 3, then another 50 metres walk to the monitors showng the train departures.

The wealth of our society is built on capitalism and discretional spending, but, by god it sucks sometimes.

Now

15

Hmm… The neck pillow no, I think it was probably one of the ubiquitous Hudson News stores.

Heh, you even see the neck pillows there on the left…

Though they run duty free shops also, it might have come out of one of those.

16

Are thre any countries that place a high import duty on neck pillows?

17

There used to be a used book store in Raleigh-Durham airport which had a great selection and reasonable prices, including discount tables in front. As I always arrive early for my flights, I got into the habit of checking it out while waiting for my flight. Unfortunately, this occasionally gave me the problem of having to try to fit a stack of books into my carry-on.

18

I think there’s a psychological effect in play. People in an airport are outside of their normal life so they sometimes feel they’re not bound by the normal rules. For some, this can mean making impulse buys of luxury items.

19

I noticed that; that the stuff in the duty free shop could generally be purchased at a fat discount in a retail store like Costco. Perhaps the high taxes on cigarettes might make them worth buying duty free.

And in New Delhi there was a duty free shop as I was exiting the airport. That seemed to be a good idea. Why but something in a duty free shop and then have to carry it on the flight?

20

Sometimes there’s things I can’t get at home. I bought some of Wayne Gretzky’s wine at the Toronto airport. It was pretty good.

I also got some cheese I can’t get at home at Lisbon’s airport - I didn’t have any place to store that stuff before I left so it was best purchased on the way out. Those international luxury brands though? No, those are available pretty much everywhere.

Maybe you should consider arranging for airport transport the next time you go to that airport - not a wheelchair, but those golf cart type things I see trundling around - and tell them why. It can’t cost them much to at least add some benches to those corridors for people like you that just need a place to stop and rest their feet for a bit.