W H Smith’s decision to sign an exclusivity deal with Penguin for the sale of travel guide books has prompted a lot to be written already, ranging from the angry to the sarcastic. Smith’s decision to limit its range of travel books to basically DK and Rough Guides in return for tremendously reduced rates can’t be a huge surprise to anyone who has witnessed the retail chain’s rapidly shrinking book sections over recent years.
Sure it’s anti-competitive and anti-customer, but it might just be the retail shape of things to come. As retailers struggle to compete with the likes of Amazon on both range and price, exclusivity deals will at least make them more competitive on the latter. In other ways the decision is logical; the retail environment is tough at the moment and the deal is only for 12 months. Yet, the deal is only for W H Smith travel shops in airports, train stations and motorway service stations where purchases are probably less price sensitive than on the high street.
Unsurprisingly writers are calling for a boycott of both W H Smith and Penguin. Disappointingly, one group who have failed to voice their opinion is the UK’s airport operators. Wouldn’t it have been refreshing if one of them had come out and publicly condemned the move? But for them to do so they would probably have to care about the customer experience on their premises a little bit more than they appear to. W H Smith presumably have quite tight contracts with the operators regarding what other retail outlets there are allowed to sell. In return the operators take the money and are unlikely to care what W H Smith sell as long as it is not in conflict with their other outlets.
Which is a shame because a really great bookshop would be one thing that might encourage me to get to the airport a little earlier. Not that you’ll find one at a UK airport. As the likes of Air New Zealand are doing their best to reduce the amount of time we have to spend at airports with their 10-minute check-in, the airports seem to be doing surprisingly little to tempt us there a little earlier.
